Suddenly, at this crisis, I felt as if my leg had been struck by something that vibrated, like a springboard, and I dropped down. I was dizzy, but did not think I was hit, and I supposed that if I stayed down for a few minutes I should be all right and able to go on. So I sat down, but quickly found that I could not move, and on feeling my leg I discovered that it was wet and warm, and I knew what that meant, so I took off my equipment and put it down and began to crawl back to the trench I had left when we charged. I crawled across a mangel-wurzel field to a house of some sort, then I must have become unconscious, for the next thing I knew was that I was being carried along on a stretcher. It was only yesterday that a friend in my battalion wrote to tell me that we were crawling pretty close together through the mangel-wurzel field. He was shot in the arm and stopped two of the Borderers’ stretcher-bearers just in time to have me put on a stretcher. I had a natural walking-stick which I had cut from a vine, and of which I was very fond. I had fastened it to my rifle and was so proud of it that I said I would carry it through the war, if I could. My friend must have known how I prized the vine-stick, for when he was sent home he brought it with him, and it’s waiting for me when I leave hospital. I also had a letter from my company officer a few days ago. He says he missed me that night, but he could not make out what had happened. He heard that a complete set of equipment had been found, and on learning that I was wounded he assumed that it was mine, and that I had been carried away and left it. He told me that on the very night I was wounded they were relieved by the French infantry, and that he himself was hit ten days afterwards. It was the day before I was wounded that I heard that I was recommended for the French Military Medal, and that was as big a surprise to me as the news that I had been given the Victoria Cross. That equipment of mine had a tragic history. During the first day of the Aisne I was without equipment and set to work to get some. A bugler of my battalion had been killed by shrapnel and I was told by my officer to go and get his equipment. “Treat him gently, poor chap,” said the officer, and you may be sure I did. I helped myself, and thinking that the poor lad’s mother might like a memento I brought away his “iron-rations” tin. This is riddled with bullet-holes, just as the bugler was. There is one thing more that I would like to say, and it is about my birthday, which falls on September 7th. As I had left the colours and gone into the Reserve I thought I could look forward to a fine celebration of the anniversary. And there _was_ a fine celebration, too, for on September 7th our retiring before the Germans ended and we started to advance and drive them back. Could any British soldier want a finer birthday celebration than that? CHAPTER VI BRITISH FIGHTERS IN FRENCH FORTS