His _sang-froid_ startled me beyond speech. Death to him was a matter of small moment—but hunger was serious. We got him his pudding. He ate it with relish, and two hours later, with a cigarette between his lips, his brave eyes closed forever. There was a bustle in the hospital that afternoon. We had orders to send two hundred patients to England. The boys were in a state of happy excitement; those who could walk hurrying down to the pack-stores and returning with all sorts of wrinkled tunics and breeches, and with old boots and caps. Sometimes an Irishman secured a kilt, and a "kiltie," much to his annoyance, was obliged to wear breeches. For when men from hospital were returning to England, although all their clothes were sterilised, no special effort was made in those days to return them their own. New clothes were issued at home. Those patients who were unable to get up were dressed in bed, their heads were encased in woollen toques, big thick bed-socks were drawn over their feet to keep them warm, and they were rolled in blankets and placed in the hall on stretchers, ready to depart. The nurses had slaved for hours. Every patient had been carefully bathed, his hands and face were spotlessly clean, his wounds were freshly dressed and he was wrapped up so snugly that the loving eye of a mother could have found no fault. The ambulances were at the door once more—but on a different mission this time—and the boys, all smiles and chatter, were carried out upon their stretchers or clambered gleefully down the stairs. Nurses, officers and men were at the door saying good-bye to their patients. Murmured words of thanks or gratitude on the one hand, and warmest well wishes on the other were exchanged, and at last, with much waving of caps and handkerchiefs, the convoy of ambulances started for the steamer at Boulogne, carrying the happy, care-free loads of boys another stage toward home, or, in Tommy’s own vernacular—toward "Blighty." *CHAPTER XII* It was a wild fight the day the Germans broke through at Givenchy; and the _Bosches_ were wilder still when, finding themselves in the town, they were in considerable doubt what to do with it. Of course it would have been perfectly all right if the rest of their corps had followed on and backed up the intrepid stormers. But the enemy had reckoned without his host, and Tommy decided that such visitors should be given a warm reception. In fact, they went so far in their efforts at hospitality that they entirely surrounded their guests and closed the breech behind them, in order that they might receive no "draft" from the rear.