I went to it. I don't suppose I ever worked so hard in my entire life. But I didn't see the use of being in a corps and staying down in the coal hole when there was plenty of room on top. Our duties could be summed up briefly: we nursed the sick, and administered first aid to accident cases. Some of us were to accompany expeditionary forces to the front and give first aid to the wounded, beside assisting at surgical operations. That was about all we had to do, except to look after the medical stores and property, and know all there was to know about compounding medicine. But one of the things I liked best about it was a certain fact that was brought out strongly--we were in the service to save lives. Get that into your head! It was drummed into ours. We began to think we were privileged people because, while we were in the war, it just happened to be our job to save life instead of taking it. I don't mean by that that we wouldn't relish a chance to get a crack at Fritz, the killer of women and babes, but our official task happened to be helping poor chaps back who had been laid low by a piece of Hun steel. Once I had got my rating, I was told to report for duty on a destroyer. That just about suited me. I had been scared to death that they'd hold me at a base hospital, with no chance to cross the briny deep, and I went in search of my chum to say good-bye. He was a quiet sort of chap, with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that won for him the name of "Specs." He was as funny off duty as a goat, but the best corps man I have ever seen on his job. We were always together. We had plugged through the course together, and worried about the exams together, and we had hoped that fate would be kind to us and send us across on the same ship. But nothing doing. I parted from him with all kinds of promises to write and went aboard the destroyer. The first man I saw on deck was "Specs," double glasses and all. I couldn't believe my eyes. I stared at him like a fool. And by cracky, it turned out to be his brother, who was coxswain and enough like "Specs" to pass for himself. Well, needless to say, Trace and I hit it up from the word go. We had a few accident cases which kept me fairly busy going over, but as we came nearer the Zone I got the fever that runs in every man's blood to catch a sight of Fritz. There were some fellows aboard who had crossed a half-dozen times without a squint at a submarine and with nothing fiercer to take a shot at than a sleepy whale.