The French soldiers were down from their Battery in a trice, all great friends of mine to whom I had often thrown ration cigarettes.

Gaspard (that was not his name, I never knew it, but always called him that in my own mind after Raymond’s hero) gave a cry and was on the ground beside me, calling me his “little cabbage,” his “poor little pigeon,” and presently he half lifted me in his arms and cradled me as he might a baby.  I remained quite conscious the whole time.  “Will I be able to ride again?” kept hammering through my brain.  The pain was becoming rapidly worse and I began to wonder just where my legs were broken.  As I could move neither I could not discover at all, and presently I gave a gasp as I felt something tighten and hurt terribly.  It was a boot lace they were fixing to stop the haemorrhage (bootlaces are used for everything in France).  The men stood round, and I watched them furtively wiping the tears away that rolled down their furrowed cheeks.  One even put his arm over his eyes as a child does.  I wondered vaguely why they were crying; it never dawned on me it had anything to do with me.  “Completement coupee,” I heard one say, and quick as a shot, I asked, “Ou est-ce que c’est qu’est coupe?” and those tactful souls, just rough soldiers, replied without hesitation, “La jaquette, Mademoiselle.”

“Je m’en fiche de la jaquette,” I answered, completely reassured.

I wished the ambulance would come soon.  “I am in a beastly mess,” I thought again.  “Fancy broken legs hurting like this.  What must the men go through!”

It was singular I was so certain they were broken.  But a month before I had received a wire from the War Office stating one of my brothers had crashed 1,000 feet and had two legs fractured, and without more ado I took it for granted I was in a similar plight.  “I won’t sit up and look,” I decided, “or I shall think I’m worse than I am.  There’s sure to be some blood about,” and the sun beat down fiercely, drying what there was on my face into hard cakes.  My lower lip had also been cut inside somehow.  One man took off his coat and held it high up to form a shade.  I saw everything that happened with a terrible distinctness.  They had already bound up my head, which was cut and bleeding profusely.

The pain was becoming almost intolerable and I wondered if in time I would cry, but luckily one does not cry on those occasions; it becomes an impossibility somehow.  I even began to wish I could.  I asked to have my legs lifted a little and the pain seemed to ease somewhat.  I shall never forget those Frenchmen.  They were perfect.  How often I had smiled at them as I passed, and laughed to see them standing in a ring like naughty schoolboys, peeling potatoes, their Sergeant walking round to see that it was done properly!

The little French doctor from the Battery, who had once helped me change a tyre, came running up and I covered the scratched side of my face lest he should get too much of a shock.  “Je suis joliment dans la soupe,” I said, and saw him go as white as a sheet.  “These Frenchmen are very sympathetic,” I thought, for it had dawned on me what they were crying about by that time.