Here I am once again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses, like those of nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the corridor. There’s just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of machine-gun bullets, and, like myself, he’s just arrived from France. I’ve not got used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered decency—all of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than three days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses rolling among the wounded men. I can’t get the sight out of my mind. To be alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.—And all the time I want to be back in the thick of it. It was so glorious—such a bon little war, as we say out there, while it lasted. You’ll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set out as the point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You will have read this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we had fired on the barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced, we began to move our battery forward by sections. The major was away on leave to Blighty, so the captain was acting O.C. He went forward to observe and reconnoitre; I was left to move up the battery. My own section was the last to move. On the road I was met by a mounted orderly who handed me a written order to join another battery which was doing forward work on opportunity targets. I reported to this battery and had brought my two guns into position on their right flank, when the first shell burst. The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under the centre team and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing one of the gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst beside the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the left temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn’t killed outright. The fragment of shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting the chin-strap and the brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It was diverted by a rivet in the strap, so instead of going straight into my head, it glanced along the skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have been operated on, but there was no time with so many casualties coming down, so I was sent to England for the operation. I was in luck to escape so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet that I hid it in my trench coat and smuggled it back to England with me as a curiosity—which is not allowed.