We saw our 1st battalion go and assault the place; and then we saw it come back, and sad it was to see them, because those who returned were mostly wounded men in ambulances. There were many wounded, as the attack had lasted three hours and our comrades had had to cross the river under fire. Then it was, when the wounded began to come back in the ambulances, that we were ordered to go in and push the Germans back. We had to go over some fields, and crossing them was like walking on rubber, because of the dead bodies. These bodies had been taken from the trenches, when it was no longer possible to have them there, and had been put in the fields. Sometimes they had been in the trenches three or four days, and we had to eat and drink and sleep with them there. And in the fields that felt like rubber, there were arms and legs and heads sticking out. Ah, yes, it was horrible indeed. And this was the war that the Germans had brought into our little country, which had done them no wrong whatever, and where they had no right to be. It will be the same for them when we get into Germany! In Termonde it was fierce fighting all the time I was there, and that was for six days. And I tell you that we Belgians did fight; for when we went into Termonde, driving the Germans out, we saw the bodies of women and children and old men that they had massacred--and most of us were crying as we passed them. The Germans can do what they like in wartime, and these were some of the things they liked. When we saw the Germans at Termonde, after seeing those murdered women and children and old men, we rushed at them with the bayonet, burning to drive our steel into the monsters. We rushed up to them in our fury, and I drove my long bayonet at a German soldier. I struck at him blindly, but I do not know where I hit him, because at such a time you look after one German and then after another, so that you shall get many of them; but his own bayonet came at me and cut across my right fingers. You can see the scars here--but they are nothing. It was hard and fierce work; but I was still well. I was tired and sleepy at the end, and was almost killed by bursting shrapnel. Pieces struck me, and one went through my right boot and between the toes. But that also was nothing. The evening came, and it was just dark. That was October 1st. I had been in the trenches, and was lying down under some trees, resting. Firing was going on still, but we were indifferent to it, and I did not care until I was struck on the right arm by an explosive bullet, a dum-dum. I was lying there, bleeding, with my badly torn arm, for three-quarters of an hour; then some of my friends came and picked me up and gave me a drink and bandaged my arm. At nine o’clock a doctor came along and sent me to a church, which was being used as a hospital. There I spent the night, waiting for the morning, when I was to have an operation.