The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and painful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in the annexe of a Base hospital on Christmas Eve, and the sergeant was as hard to please as if they were recruits doing their first squad drill. They were a scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning chaplain to the Forces, from Base "details" and convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their time erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead and gaining audibly with each lap despite the desperate spurts of the rest. "Opened out his throttle--'e has," whispered an Army driver professionally to his neighbour; "'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the speed limit." The sergeant glanced magisterially at the offender, a young Dorset, who a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who has lately done enough digging for a whole parish. "You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he exclaimed reproachfully; "you ain't out on patrol, yer know. 'Shun! Now again! 'Christians'." Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn, Whereon ... The familiar melody was shut behind me as I closed the door. Those West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and, in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night, illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered mazily whether they had brought Father Christmas with them. A low cry of pain reached my ears as I opened the door of Surgical Ward A.I. A nurse was removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him ready to spray the wound with peroxide. "Buck up, old chap," cried the patients in the neighbouring beds who looked on encouragingly at these ministries. Another moan escaped him as the discoloured bandage, with its faint odour of perchloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed flesh. "Next gramophone record, please!" chanted his neighbours. The patient smiled faintly at the exhortation and set his teeth. "That's better, sonny," whispered the nurse with benign approval. "It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going to drain off the septic matter," interjected the surgeon in holland overalls, with sleeves tucked up to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The dresser handed him a nickel reed from the sterilising basin.