I found myself now and then "checking up" my own physical and mental condition. I had been slightly injured several times--two scratches from bullets on my left hand, a bullet in my right elbow, two pieces of shell in my shoulder, a knee-cap knocked loose and a fractured cheek-bone from the fuse-cap of a "whizz-bang." None of these had put me out of action for more than a few hours and I had managed to keep out of the hospital. (I had an instinctive dread of hospitals.) But I knew, right down in my heart, that my nerve was weakening. Thinking over some of the things we had done, I believed I could never do them again. I do not think the man ever lived who would not, eventually, get into this condition. Some men "break" at the first shell that strikes near them, while others will go for months under the heaviest shell fire but, as I have said, it will certainly get them in the end. Of course I did not express any of these feelings to Bouchard, but tried to keep things moving all the time so as to give him little opportunity to worry. But, to tell the truth, I guess I needed the diversion more than he did, for he was the bravest and "gamest" youngster I ever knew. Before we left France for our week in London I was told by my Colonel that I had been recommended for a commission and something or other in the way of a decoration and he suggested that I call upon General Carson, Canadian General in London, and find out about it. I did call at the General's office several times but was unable to see him. It afterward developed that the commission had already been gazetted and I was really and truly a First "Leftenant." I did not hear of it for nearly a month and, during the interval, went through, as a sergeant, one of the hottest times in my whole career. When our leave was up we, together with hundreds of others, left Victoria Station early one morning for Folkestone and Boulogne and so on, back to Poperinghe, where we arrived just at daybreak the following morning and were welcomed by an early rising boche airman, who dropped about half a dozen bombs, evidently aimed at the railroad station. Fortunately, no one was hit. Then we trudged down the road, kilometer after kilometer, every one gloomy and grouchy, looking for our several units. Ours had moved and we spent the whole day before we located it. We found the battalion in camp near the town of Dickebusch and soon settled down to the same old routine. They had not been back in the line since we left but had been engaged in some special work in and around this town, about which there is an interesting story.