Later, one of my mates in the hospital, who was with my regiment, told me how I got mine. He had witnessed it. A Jack Johnson striking about fifteen yards in front of the trench I was in, exploded, caving the trench in for a length of about thirty yards. I, with Sergeant Johnstone, who had come up the previous day with reinforcements, was buried completely. Then the Germans charged over the trench at our fellows, who retired to their reserve trenches. However, the enemy was repulsed and had to retire to their own lines again. This fight started about 2 P.M., and it was not until about nine o'clock that night that our company came up and began to re-open the trench. It seems that one fellow was about to use his pick when another close by with a shovel noticed something in the form of a head. He stayed the hand with the pick just in time. It was a head--and mine at that. They completely unearthed me, and, as I looked to be dead, placed me to one side with a waterproof sheet over me, to be buried later. Luckily enough, a medical officer examined me and found there was still a little life left. He used artificial respiration, put my legs in splints made up of empty ration boxes, bandaged my damaged right hand, and sent me to the Rouen Hospital, unconscious, but with a spark of life still in me. Even after two weeks' stay in the hospital my condition was still very critical, but I had the courage and optimism peculiar to the Scot and my hopes for recovery endured stubbornly. The moans of my German neighbour, mixed with cries for "_Das Ei_," didn't allay my fever at all. No one knew what he wanted. Latterly one of our wounded fellows called the nurse over and suggested very earnestly that perhaps he had a glass eye and it needed some attention. The nurse at once examined his eyes, but found them all right. However, the next medical officer on duty understood German and acquainted the nurse with the fact that the patient had been calling for an egg. He marked on his chart that he should be given two fresh eggs every morning. This German was accorded first attention, while our own boys had to be content with being next in line. We could not kick, however, as the doctors and nurses stretched their ability to do for others to the utmost. After our prisoner had had his hunger appeased with the "Ei," he seemed content to die, for that is just what he did. From what I could learn, his injury had been a bad one, a large piece of shell having pierced his chest. I felt sure, when I saw him carried out, that my turn was next. Then I discovered that the number of my cot was _13_, so--recalling the many escapes from death I had had and how this number had been concerned in them, my hopes for recovery went soaring high.