At last we emerged into a large wide communication trench, with the landmarks of which I was familiar. I was suffering severely now, and was beginning to worry over trifles. Suddenly it came to me that I was still a couple of miles from the dressing station, and when we came out of the communication trench on to open ground that had been torn up by shrapnel, I was consumed with fear that at any moment I might be hit by another shell, and might not get aboard the hospital after all, for by this time my mind had centered on getting into a clean bed. A dozen different thoughts chased through my mind. I was grieved to think that in order to get at the wound it had been necessary to cut the fine great-coat that I had so much wanted to take home as a souvenir. I asked Hoddinott what they had done with it, and he told me that part of it was under my head as a pillow, but that it was so besmeared with blood that it would be thrown away as soon as I arrived at the dressing station. From thinking of the great-coat, I remembered that before I went out with the digging party I had taken off my raincoat and left it near my haversack in the trench, and in the pocket of it was the little diagram I had drawn of the position of the sniper I had seen the night before. Again I called for Hoddinott, and again he came, and answered me patiently and gently. "Yes, he would tell Art about the little diagram." Where a fringe of low bushes bordered the pathway at the end of the open space, Hoddinott and Pike turned. For the distance of about a city block they carried the stretcher along a road cut through thick jungle. At the end of it stood a little post from which drooped a white flag with a red cross. It was the end of the first stage for the stretcher bearers. A great wave of loneliness swept over me when I realized that I was to see the last of the men with whom I had gone through so much. I was almost crying at the thought of leaving them there. Somehow or other it did not seem right for me to go. I felt that in some way I was taking an unfair advantage of them. Hoddinott and Pike slipped the straps from their shoulders and lowered the stretcher gently. Under the blanket Hoddinott sought my hand. "Good-by, Gal," he said. "Is there any message I can take back to Art?" "Yes," I said, "tell him to keep my raincoat."