When I got there I was sent upstairs for some tea.  On entering the mess, I found Lieutenant Francis also there, having tea.  He was wounded in the arm.  His arm was in a sling.  There were also two or three German officers having tea there.  They were quite as sociable as our Allies!  Who should come in to see us, a few minutes later, but Major Brighten, who, being on ‘battle reserve,’ was down at the Transport!  He expressed surprise when he saw me, and asked me to tell him all about it.  He would insist on carrying some of my equipment downstairs.  He informed me that my batman, Critchley, was down below.  So I went and saw him.  He had got one in the leg too.

“I had my wound dressed here and also had an anti-tetanous inoculation put into me.  I did not like it!

“Then Francis and I got into a motor-ambulance and were motored away, through Poperinghe, to Watou.  We passed what I assumed to be Nugent’s 36th Division coming up in motor-lorries to relieve the 55th Division.  At Watou we were taken to the 10th C.C.S.  We had our wounds dressed again there and then had tea.  Then we got on to a hospital train which was standing in the siding.  Who should join us in the saloon on this train but Gaulter, of the King’s Own!  He, too, had got one in the leg!  The question which interested us most on the way back was whether we would get to ‘Blighty.’  The train went very slowly.  We were held up because the Germans were shelling Hazebrouck of all places.  They must have some long-range guns!

“We arrived in Boulogne at 5.30 on Wednesday morning, August 1, and were immediately motored to Wimereux, where we entered the 14th General Hospital.  We went to bed at once and remained in bed all day and night.

“The next morning I was awakened by the greeting:  ’You’re for England; you leave at 8.15.’  So I got up and had breakfast.  Then we were motored down to Boulogne again where we all embarked on the St. David, and sailed for the shores of old England.  It was a happy voyage.  We landed at Dover at midday....

“The train left Dover at 4.30 p.m.  We reached Manchester at midnight and I and seven others were immediately motored to Worsley.  So here I am in a nice cosy bed in the spacious mansion of the Egertons of Ellesmere—­Worsley Hall.  What vicissitudes one does go through!” ...

* * * * *

So, as far as the writer of this book was concerned, Ypres and all that its name implies was now but a memory:  I was safely back on the right side of the water once again.  My feelings on leaving “Wipers” behind me can best be expressed in the words which a poet of the 55th Division dedicated to the British Soldier in the second number of Sub Rosa: 

  “Good-bye, Wipers! though I ’opes it is for good,
  It ’urts me for to leave yer—­I little thought it would.

  When I gets back to Blighty, and all the fightin’s done,
  Mebbe the picters of the past will rise up, one by one.