At all times a good soldier dislikes to go to hospital; but especially so on active service. He wants to do all he can for his country and he dreads to be suspected of "skrimshanking." The reluctance of Colonel Loring, who commanded the second Battalion of the Royal Warwickshires, to go to hospital caused his death, which was a great loss to the Army. Wounded in a foot by a shrapnel bullet he refused to go to hospital, had his foot bound up in a puttee when unable to wear a boot and led his men on horseback. This made him a conspicuous mark for sharpshooters, and after two chargers had been killed under him he was himself shot dead. Great courage is shown by orderlies and ambulance men connected with a military hospital. There is the danger of catching infectious diseases and the danger of collecting the wounded during and after a battle. For ambulance men there is no excitement, or the stimulus of "hitting back;" yet they often get hit themselves. CHAPTER XXII Ready to Return I read this in the letter of an Army Service man printed in _The Evening News_. "There was a Guardsman in hospital in France with me who had eight bullets in him, besides three ugly bayonet wounds. He had the constitution of a horse, and after he had his 'rattles,' as he called the bullets, taken out he swore that he would be back before Christmas to square accounts with the Germans. All he wanted was to return to the fighting." "He lies upon his bed of pain. Despite of nurses deft and kind He is unhappy; it is plain That something weighs upon his mind. Ask him his dearest wish to name, And, smiling even on the rack, He tells, without a trace of shame, How he is anxious to get back." In a half humorous way our soldiers took their wounds. They knew from experience, as a distinguished officer once said to me, that a battle field is a disagreeable place, but keen soldiers that they were, they thought that there was one thing worse than a battle, and that was not to be in one. Many soldiers were quite indignant at being sent home for what they called "scratches that will heal." A sergeant was anxious to return to the war because he thought that he ought not to have been sent away from it. He was hit by five bullets, but why for this trifling matter should his colonel have ordered him out of the firing line and into an ambulance? Men make light of wounds in arms, hands and feet. "They have just earned us a little rest. We shall soon go back to the trenches again."