All volition, all muscular and nerve-initiative had been beaten out of him. He could only try to breathe through that hot sponge and to keep that other trickling thing out of his lungs. It was not his mind that made this effort; only a body detached from his mind, acting involuntarily like the flouncing of a fish out of water. He lost consciousness again before he realised where he was hit; and the litter-bearers bore him on to the casualty clearing station. They did not know whether or not he was dead. Sometimes cases like that were and sometimes they were not when they reached the station. "Better be, though," said the one who had the rear handles of the stretcher. "Yes. I'd want to be," said the man in front. CHAPTER XXVII A SMILING HELEN The War Office must foresee everything; that men must be drilled before they know how to fight and that when they fight some will be wounded. There must be experts in salvage as well as in preparation; depots to mend broken parts in the immense, complicated machine. On a hillside where they would miss none of the rare winter sunshine, the summer breezes, or the tonic of fresh spring air, rows of long, green barracks had risen. Gravelled paths connected them between stretches of transplanted sod and geranium beds. Women in nurses' uniforms, and surgeons twiddling stethoscopes, and hospital corps attendants bearing trays of food, went along the paths. Sometimes the surgeons stopped to talk about this or that case, in their professional jargon. Some were youngsters who had not yet begun practice; others of the old regular service had looked after the health of Mr. Thomas Atkins in India and out-of-the-way places, where flies and mosquitoes are busy in tropical heat with their wicked occupations; and still others were grey-haired, eminent specialists from London used to receive fees that gave the youngsters a giddy feeling, but now working for a lieutenant's pay. All the talent and skill of the medical and surgical world were at the service of this repair shop of damaged men. Indoors the X-ray "sharp" was always busy locating bits of steel as black points on hazy photographs; still forms were wheeled into the operating-room so softly that it seemed as simple a business as slipping a paper into a drawer; the beds in the wards were in rows between a broad aisle, with screens moved here and there by the noiseless sleight-of-hand of nurses trained to their part no less than infantry in the use of the bayonet.