“Don’t let go,” I said to the stretcher-bearer, who was holding the trolley back. I still thought of sending up a message about that Lewis-gun position. Why could not I make up my mind? I looked back and saw Maple Redoubt receding further and further in the distance. “By Jove,” I thought, “I may not see it again for weeks.” And suddenly I realised that whether I made up my mind about the Lewis-gun position or not, would not make the slightest difference! “Where do I go to now?” said I. “There’s an ambulance at the Citadel,” said the stretcher-bearer. “You’re quite right. You’ll be in Heilly in a little over an hour.” Heilly? Why, this would be interesting, I thought. And I should just go, and have nothing to decide. I should be passive. I was going right out of the arena! And the events of yesterday seemed a dream already. WEDNESDAY I lay in bed, at the clearing station at Heilly. It was just after nine o’clock the same morning, and the orderlies were out of sight, but not out of hearing, washing up the breakfast things. Half the dark blue blinds were drawn, as the June sun was blazing outside. I could see the glare of it on the cobbles in the courtyard, as the door opened and a cool, tall nurse entered. I closed my eyes, and pretended to be asleep. I felt she might come and talk, and one thing I did not want to do, I did not want to talk. My body was most extraordinarily comfortable. I moved my feet toes-up for the sheer joy of feeling the smooth sheets fall cool on my feet when I turned them sideways again. The pillow was comfortable; the whole bed was comfortable; even my arm, that was throbbing violently now, and felt boiling hot, was very comfortably rested on another pillow. I just wanted to lie, and lie: only my mind was working so fast and hard that it seemed to make the skin tight over my forehead. And all the time there was that buzz, buzzing. If I left off thinking, the buzzing took complete mastery of my brain. That was intolerable: so I had to keep on thinking. At the Citadel an R.A.M.C. doctor had given me tea and a second label. He had also given me an injection against tetanus. This he did in the chest. Why didn’t he do it in my right arm, I had thought: I would have rather had it there. Again, I had had to wait quite a quarter of an hour, while he attended to the “D” Company private. I had learned from an orderly that this poor fellow was bound to lose a leg, and again I had felt that I was in the way here, that I was a bother. I had then watched the poor fellow carried out on a stretcher, and the stretcher slid into the ambulance. There was a seat inside, into which I was helped. Lewis had gone in front, very red-faced and awkward. And an R.A.M.C. orderly had got in behind with me. Sitting, I had felt that he must think I was shamming! Then I remembered the first ambulance I had seen, when I first walked from Chocques to Béthune in early October! Was there really any connection between me then and me now?