Just then an ambulance train came down the line and the two English doctors were fetched.  A tourniquet which seemed like a knife, and hurt terribly, was applied as well as the bootlace.  I was also given some morphia.  “This will hurt a little,” he said as he pushed in the needle, which I thought distinctly humorous.  As if a prick from a hypodermic could be anything in comparison with what was going on “down there” where I hadn’t courage to look!  His remark had one good effect though, because I thought:  “If he thinks that will hurt there can’t be much to fuss over down there.”

Would the ambulance never arrive?  I wondered if we were always so long—­which F.A.N.Y. would come?  “She’s cranked up by now and on the way, probably as far as the bridge,” I thought.  I drove all the way down in my own mind and yet she did not arrive, but they had ’phoned to the French hospital in the town and not the Convoy.  I did not know this till I saw the French car arrive.

It seemed an age.  Gaspard never moved once from his cramped position and kept saying soothingly from time to time:  “Allons, p’tit chou, mon pauvre petit pigeon, ca viendra tout a l’heure, he la petite.”

At last the ambulance came.  I dreaded being lifted, but those soldiers raised me so tenderly the wrench was not half as bad as I had anticipated.  I had been there just over forty minutes.  Then began the journey in the ambulance.  The men gave me a fine salute as I was taken off and I waved good-bye.  One of the Sisters from the train came in the car with me and also the little French doctor whose hand I hung on to most of the way, and which incidentally must have been like pulp when we arrived.

As luck would have it the driver was a new man, and neither the doctor nor the sister knew the way, so I had to give the directions.  The doctor was all for taking me to the French military hospital, but I asked to be taken to the Casino.

“So this is what the men go through every day,” I thought, as we were into a hole and out again with a bump and the pain became almost too much to bear.  The doctor swore at the driver, and I took another grip of his hand.  “Bien difficile de ne pas faire ca,” I murmured, for I knew he had really manoeuvred it well.  The constant give of the springs jiggling endlessly up and down, up and down, was as trying as anything.  The trouble was I knew every hole in that road and soon we had to cross railway lines!  The sister, who was a stranger too, began to worry how she would find her way back to the train, but I assured her once arrived at the Casino, she only had to walk up to our camp to get a F.A.N.Y. car.  “I hope there won’t be many people there when I’m pulled out,” I thought, “I hate being stared at in such a beastly mess,” above all I hated a fuss.

Now we had come to the railway lines.  “What would it have been like without morphia?” I wondered.  Of course the drawbridge was up and that meant at least ten minutes wait till the ships went through.  My luck seemed dead out.  At last I heard the familiar clang as it rattled into place, and we were over.