’X Camp, 102, General Hospital.

’DEAR MISS COOKSON,—­I am writing to you, in the first instance instead of to Mrs. Sarratt, because I have a vivid remembrance of what seemed to me your sister’s frail physical state, when I saw you last May at Rydal.  I hope she is much stronger, but I don’t want to risk what, if it ended in disappointment, might only be a terrible strain upon her to no purpose—­so I am preparing the way by writing to you.

’The fact is I want you to come over to France—­at once.  Can you get away, without alarming your sister, or letting her, really, know anything about it?  It is the merest, barest chance, but I think there is just a chance, that a man who is now in hospital here may be poor George Sarratt—­only don’t build upon it yet, please.  The case was sent on here from one of the hospitals near the Belgian frontier about a month ago, in order that a famous nerve-specialist, who has joined us here for a time, might give his opinion on it.  It is a most extraordinary story.  I understand from the surgeon who wrote to our Commandant, that one night, about three months ago, two men, in German uniforms, were observed from the British front-line trench, creeping over the No Man’s Land lying between the lines at a point somewhere east of Dixmude.  One man, who threw up his hands, was dragging the other, who seemed wounded.  It was thought that they were deserters, and a couple of men were sent out to bring them in.  Just as they were being helped into our trench, however, one of them was hit by an enemy sniper and mortally wounded.  Then it was discovered that they were not Germans at all.  The man who had been hit said a few incoherent things about his wife and children in the Walloon patois as he lay in the trench, and trying to point to his companion, uttered the one word “Anglais”—­that, everyone swears to—­and died.  No papers were found on either of them, and when the other man was questioned, he merely shook his head, with a vacant look.  Various tests were applied to him, but it was soon clear, both that he was dumb—­and deaf—­from nerve shock, probably—­and that he was in a terrible physical state.  He had been severely wounded—­apparently many months before—­in the shoulder and thigh.  The wounds had evidently been shockingly neglected, and were still septic.  The surgeon who examined him thought that what with exposure, lack of food, and his injuries, it was hardly probable he would live more than a few weeks.  However, he has lingered till now, and the specialist I spoke of has just seen him.

’As to identification marks there were none.  But you’ll hear all about that when you come.  All I can say is that, as soon as they got the man into hospital, the nurses and surgeons became convinced that he was English, and that in addition to his wounds, it was a case of severe shell-shock—­acute and long-continued neurasthenia properly speaking,—­loss of memory, and all the rest of it.