Sometimes—and this is a very piteous and woeful thought—a wounded soldier has to lie out a long time on the field of battle before he can be carried in. I am sorry to say that the Germans often fired on the men sent out to pick up wounded. As an example, I will tell you of the case of a soldier whose left thigh was fractured and right foot wounded in a very fierce engagement. He lay alone among the dead and dying, unseen, and apparently without any power of attracting the attention of the ambulance men. At last he plucked up enough strength to crawl along towards the British trenches. “I was about finished,” he wrote afterwards, “when a man of the Welsh Regiment saw me and came out for me. That man ought to get the Victoria Cross. I didn’t ask his name, and I don’t know what it was, but he was a real good one, and no mistake. He got me up on his shoulders and he carried me right in. The Germans were firing all the time, and I was so near finished that I wanted him to drop me and let me die. It didn’t seem right for him to be worrying about getting me in. All he said was, ‘You hold tight, old man; I’ve got you all right, and I don’t intend to let you go!’” Wherever the British wounded passed they were loaded with gifts by the French peasants. Old men and women, children even, brought them the best they had. They would bring the milk kept for the baby’s bottle, or their only and much valued bottle of champagne or old wine. A Lancashire private showed his comrades an agricultural medal an old man had given him. “It is not much in itself, I dare say,” he said, to excuse the tears in his eyes, “but I could see it was what the old fellow was proudest of, so you see I have to keep it careful.” Some of you, when walking through one of our beautiful, peaceful, country churchyards, may have cast a sad thought to the lonely graves where so many of our bravest soldiers lie in France. But let me tell you that one of the best traits in the French character is respect for death. A tramp found dead on the wayside near a French village will be given a decent funeral, and what is more there will be women present, not only at the Mass said for his soul, but also at the grave side. That being so, you will readily imagine with what reverence and care the British dead who have died fighting for France have been treated by the people whose sad fate it has been to live close to the great battlefields of this war. After each action the dead were sought for, and after their personal possessions had been put aside for their relations, they were buried on a strip of ground called “The Field of Honour.” There French and British lie side by side, as you will see from the following letter written by a lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps serving with the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders: