CHAPTER V.

STORIES FROM LE NUMÉRO 106.

Behind one of the hospital wings there is a tiny garden walled in on all sides by high buildings. Here were some mouldy-looking pear-trees, a ragged gooseberry bush, and a patch of ragged cabbage-stalks. The ground was thickly covered with rotten leaves; in one corner empty broken rabbit-hutches, pieces of broken furniture, broken bottles, and miscellaneous _débris_ gave an additional note of depression. Still it was a change from the dulness of the courtyard, and the garden, such as it was, became the object of my daily excursions. The gardener, now digging trenches in some distant part of France, might never dig here again, but his two little children played at soldiers every afternoon among the decayed leaves. A large shed at the end of the garden, which had at one time been used as a wash-house, now falling to ruin, still contained a rusty boiler and some broken wash-tubs. In one corner, piled one on top of the other, stood six or seven roughly-hewn coffins made out of old packing-cases.

Le Picard was often a partner in these explorations round the dead garden, and together we visited the coffins. "Ça voyez vous," said this one-legged philosopher, "ça c'est le dernier costume."

Entrance to the hospital through an archway under the building was barred by a massive wooden _portail_. One morning, when the bread-cart had left the gateway open, Picard and I took up our stand on the threshold and looked out into the street. The houses opposite the hospital are modern and uninteresting, walls covered with dirty white plaster, shutters closed and in need of paint. Farther down on the right, as you stand at the hospital door, the street, as it nears the Place Publique, begins to curve, and here were old houses with their quaint roofs grouped picturesquely against the dull sky, where heavy clouds prepared to renew their steady downpour.

The street was empty. Farther down there are shops, but they are closed. A German soldier came clattering along the pavement. Just as he reached the hospital we two standing at the door caught his eye and aroused his curiosity to such an extent that he stopped, stared for a moment, then walked backwards for quite a long way and nearly bumped into an officer. A few sad-looking women, carrying baskets and bundles, stopped in the middle of the street and feasted their eyes on Picard. "It stirs the heart," said they, "to see the French uniform." These poor people made a collection of their scarce sous and presented Picard with one franc fifty. The children gathered in such numbers that I had to ask them to move on for fear of the Germans.

After the children had gone, a little girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old, came shyly up to the door. Under a threadbare cloak, which in the cold wind and rain afforded small protection to her tired little body, she carried a bundle of picture post-cards. Her present errand was not concerned with asking for charity. She came quite near without speaking or looking up, and stretched out a thin grimy little hand to give me a two-sous piece. Having given me the two sous and rendered me speechless with mixed emotions, she turned to run, but Picard stopped her. "Wilt thou not show us the pretty post-cards, my little one?" "That I cannot do," came the resolute answer; "they are not mine to give away, and they cost two sous each to buy." But I, being obviously the possessor of two sous, was allowed to see the post-cards, and in exchange for my two-sous piece chose a view of the Place Publique.

At this time the army of occupation at Cambrai was the 6th Bavarians. On the whole, the behaviour of the Bavarian soldiers was excellent. Cases of rioting and drunkenness were rare, and we heard no stories of atrocities such as the Germans were guilty of in Belgium.

Picard and I stood at the hospital gate every morning for several days in succession, and in no case were we greeted with insults, although I found later on from personal experience that even a severely crippled enemy was not safe from the insulting jests of a German soldier. Of course we always saluted any officer who passed, and our salute was always punctiliously returned. Sometimes a private soldier saluted, and one day two tall bearded reservists stopped, crossed the street, and gave me a packet of cigarettes. Next morning we found the gate closed. A note had been sent from the Kommandantur stating that "it was forbidden for soldiers to stand at the door of the hospital." The watchful "Verboten Department" scored another point and deprived us of a harmless amusement.

A German orderly came on the 17th December with the following strange message: "The General is coming to inspect the hospital, and wishes to know if the Scotch officer would be good enough to wear his uniform." Being deficient of sporran, glengarry, kilt apron, S.B. belt, brogues, and spats, my "uniform" consisted of the khaki tunic, kilt, kilt pin, hose-tops and flashes, grey woollen socks, and black cloth snow-boots. On a black glengarry made by M. Herbin to my design I wore the cap badge, which I had fortunately taken off and put in my pocket when sitting in the trenches on the morning of the 26th August. I was making the best of this strange equipment when the arrival of the General and his Staff was announced. They were waiting for me in the corridor outside the Salle cinq. The picture of this group of German Staff officers is one not easily forgotten. I turned slowly in at the door with crutch and stick, laboriously dragging one leg after another, rested against the wall, and saluted. Among the group I recognised Dr Meyer, scowling and ill at ease; also General Oberarzt Schmidt, who, eager to show me off as being his own particular prize, was at once snubbed by the General, and subsided into a dignified silence. These Staff officers were all big heavy men of the usual German type, but the General, small, slimly built, with a light grey moustache, had an air of distinction that was almost French. His manner also was tactful and dignified.

After a preliminary question about my health and inquiry as to my white hair, which I had to explain was probably due partly to shock and partly to my head having been so long bandaged up, the conversation got beyond the little German I possessed, and one of the big Staff officers came to the rescue in fluent but guttural English. They could not believe that the kilt was worn in the winter-time, and seemed to think that it was only a parade uniform. Many questions were asked about the advantages of the kilt as fighting kit. I said that it was a very adaptable uniform, good both for fighting and for running away. This remark was recognised to be a joke, and translated as such to the General. I was asked how many regiments in Scotland wore the kilt, and if all the Highland regiments were composed of Highlanders.

"No," I said in reply to another question, "we do not wear trousers even in winter."

"Schrecklich kalt im winter," they repeated, nodding at each other suspiciously.

With a polite wish for my speedy recovery the General intimated that the parade was at an end. The Staff clicked its heels and saluted--even Meyer had to swallow his hate and follow the example of the senior officers.

Outside the corridor, Mme. la Directrice and some of the nurses were standing at the foot of the stairs ready to accompany the officers round the hospital, but the General passed by and went out into the court without taking any notice.

The inspection was over.

A lady who lives near Caudry came to see me. She told me that the graves of the British soldiers, both in the churchyard and in the fields around the village, are well cared for by the villagers, and that a large number of identity discs had, with the consent of the German authorities, been locked up at the Mairie. Near the little wood between Audencourt and Caudry, on the spot where we had dug our trenches on the morning of the 26th August, there are buried seventeen soldiers and three officers.

About the middle of December the Médecin Chef was taken away to Germany.

A number of causes now contributed to make life at the 106 wholly unendurable. An entire absence of discipline among the hospital orderlies and the constant squabbling of the nurses had been points which the doctor and I used often to discuss and deplore. Now that the restraining influence of the doctor's age and rank was no longer with us, the evils of disorganisation became every day more apparent. The "Directrice," or head matron of the hospital, was wholly incapable, and by her tactless mismanagement set the whole hospital by the ears. The orderlies grew noisier and more slovenly every day. Youths who had no occupation in the hospital, and only appeared at meal-times, were allowed to air their opinions in endless discussion. Noisy, chattering visitors strolled in at all hours of the day, and there was no corner of the hospital safe from invasion. Quarrels among the nurses reached such a stage of bitterness that many were not on speaking terms. Friends whose kind visits I had always welcomed now came rarely or not at all. It was evident that such a state of affairs portended something more serious than tactlessness or mismanagement. The gossips of Cambrai were busy with many stories to the discredit of Mme. la Directrice, but it seemed to me unreasonable that the voice of scandal should be concerned with a plain-looking woman the wrong side of forty. The whole affair may have been merely foolishness and vanity, but it was certainly an indiscretion on the part of Mme. la Directrice to receive in the courtyard of the 106 Hospital, from the hand of a German orderly, bouquets of white chrysanthemums presented with the compliments of a German officer.

Every morning at 11 o'clock I paid a visit to the Salle cinq. Many of the older inhabitants had gone, some to Germany, others now rested in what Picard calls le dernier costume. No. 6 still complained unceasingly from his corner bed. No. 3, the Chasseur Alpin with a bullet through the chest, had recovered from various complications and was now able to sit up in a chair. Among the newcomers were three English soldiers. Ben Steele, a reservist from Manchester, had one bullet through his arm and one through his leg. Both wounds were healed, but the leg remained stiff, swollen, paralysed, and the pain was ceaseless.

The story of his wound is one of those ugly tales of atrocities committed by individual German soldiers, for which the German Army, with its perfect discipline, cannot escape responsibility. Ben was badly wounded in the arm, and was left lying in the trenches when his company retired. "I got that in fair fighting," said Ben, pointing to his wounded arm. He told me the rest of the story briefly, and did not care to refer to it again. "When the Germans came along they shouted 'Hands up.' I was lying in the bottom of the trench. I lifted my left hand, but a German soldier, jumping over the trench, fired down at me point-blank, and the bullet, which went through my right thigh, knocked me unconscious." Ben was sent back to England a few months later, and will probably be crippled for life.

On December 5th a party of convalescent British soldiers arrived from the Civil Hospital, among them R. Anderson, a reservist from my own battalion, L.-Cpl. M'Donald, Royal Irish, and James Prime, Rifle Brigade.

I can never forget the four days these men spent with me at the 106--first, because they were such good companions, and second, because two of these men subsequently met death at German hands under circumstances of revolting inhumanity.

Prime represented all that is best in the typical English soldier. He came from the Midlands, the heart of England. It was a treat for me to sit and listen to the story of his short battle experience, which, a plain and common tale in these times, acquired enthralling interest from the graphic language and quiet humour of the speaker.

Irish, Scotch, and English, we all gathered in the Salle cinq and forgot our troubles, present and impending.

Prime was a born story-teller. He possessed the rare faculty of making pictures in the minds of his hearers. He showed me a photograph of his wife and children, and I can well remember the description of his home in England. We found a subject of mutual interest in the keeping of poultry on the "intensive" system, and discussed the respective merits of Wyandottes, Leghorns, and Buff Orpingtons.

"Bob" Anderson, when I first saw him, was sitting dressed in blue coat and red kepi at the refectory table with Prime, M'Donald the Irish Lance-Corporal, and half a dozen French soldiers. Right glad I was to hear the familiar accents of my native land!

Anderson could give me no news of the battalion, as he had been knocked out at the same time and place as myself. On the whole, the Germans had so far treated him fairly well. "It was surely the whole German army," said Bob, "that marched along the road near Audencourt when I was lying in the ditch with a broken leg, smoking my pipe. They didn't take much notice. At one of the halts a German stepped out of the ranks--'Hullo, Jock, what's ado wi' you?' said he, and gave me a drink out of his water-bottle. This was a German who had lived for fifteen years in Glasgow! The next halt was a different story. Several of the Germans gathered round, shook their fists at me, and one of them snatched the pipe out of my mouth and threw it away."

M'Donald, who soon after died a hero's death at Wittenberg, was a young fellow not more than twenty-one or twenty-two, quiet, sad, and delicate-looking. He had quite recovered from a dangerous wound in the chest, though he was still weak and walked with difficulty.

A photographer came and took a group of the British soldiers, who were mostly dressed in French uniform, and next day they were all taken off to Germany. Their departure for Germany was such a day of sadness for us who were left behind, that it seems as if we must have had some premonition of the future. The men went off loaded with as many parcels as they could carry--shirts, socks, tobacco, food, a bottle of wine in each greatcoat pocket, and five francs each from the Hospital Funds.

Of the three soldiers, Anderson is the only one who has lived to tell the story of what befell after leaving the courtyard of the 106 on Dec. 7, 1914. Anderson survived, was eventually exchanged, and we met a year later in Millbank Hospital. The following is the story in his own words, taken down in shorthand. It is a story which bears the stamp of truth in every word, and is corroborated in every detail by a Government report published in all the daily papers on April 10, 1916:--

"When we left Cambrai Station, we were sent in a hospital train to Giessen; it took us three days. We had one basin of soup each day, and a piece of bread.

"When we got to Giessen we were taken to a waiting-room at the station and bad used. All the English were put on one side, called 'English swine' and that kind of thing. We were then taken in a motor ambulance to the Town Hall in Giessen. We were three weeks in that hospital and the food was all right there, but we, especially the English, were bad used all the time by the orderlies. There were four English altogether--M'Donald, Prime, and myself, and another chap in the Wilts. We went from there to Giessen camp, a great big French camp, and had to march two and a half miles with two sticks; I was nearly dead when I reached that camp; it was all uphill, and a crowd behind us shoving us on. We were there three days, then had orders to fall in and march to the station again. We started to march to the station, but I was not fit to do it, and some one stopped me in the town, put me on a car, and took me to the station in the car. We got to Wittenberg the next day, and as soon as we arrived in Wittenberg all the people were at the station, a big crowd, men and women. They all had big sticks, some had bars of iron, and we had to run the gauntlet of this,--of course I could not do so. I got one terrible kick, but anyhow I managed to get into camp, and as soon as we got into camp we got knocked about by the Germans, and everything was taken from us.

"Of course the food was horrible all the time. We had heard stories about typhus in the camp, and the French doctors inoculated us. I took ill about the beginning of February, and the Frenchman took my temperature, which was very high. He ordered me to the hospital, but there were no stretchers to be got. Six men carried me down to the bottom of the camp, about half a mile, and dragged me into an empty bungalow. It was in the same camp; there was no isolation. I was put on the floor amongst a lot of Russians; there were very few beds, and I was on the bare floor. In the camp there was one bed between three men, and I had left my bed in the camp. I lay on the bare floor all the afternoon; no orderlies were there; nobody came near me. The soup came up at night--just the same ordinary rations as we got in camp. The soup came up in a wooden tub without a cover, and they had to carry it about half a mile from the cook-house, and it arrived at the hospital full of dust and dirt--at the door of the hospital. The strongest that were able to get it got it, and the weakest lay without. That is a fact. I lay there about three or four days, when some Englishmen volunteered to come down and look after us.

"I took typhus first: when I was in hospital four or five days, Prime was carried there; he was put down on the floor, and died four or five days afterwards. Sergeant Spence of the Scots Guards was with him when he died. Just before the end they got him a ramshackle bed made up with boards, no mattress.

"The place was a long, narrow hut, whitewashed all over, and about one hundred men in it, absolutely packed, and not more than half a dozen beds at the first. We lay on the floor. There were stoves, but hardly any coal. No one brought in any food. You had to go outside to get it, and the orderly would give you some soup in your basin if you were there. Those not fit to rise from the floor got none unless a comrade brought it to them.

"The French doctors came round, but what could they do? They had nothing to give you, and could do absolutely nothing.

"The Germans had all left the camp as soon as typhus broke out. They built up wooden shoots to put the food down. When parcels from home came they went down the shoot.

"When the beds came in carts they were lifted over the barbed wire. No Germans came in.

"There were never enough beds, and men were lying on the floor all the time.

"We had nearly 100 deaths a day at one time. The total population of the camp was about 16-17,000, with only about six doctors, French and Russian. Then we had six British R.A.M.C. doctors--Captain Sutcliffe, Major Fry, Captain Fielding, Captain Vidal, and Mr Lugard. Major Fry, Captain Fielding, and Captain Sutcliffe took the typhus and died. I never got a wash all the time I was there until I was able to go to the tap. There was one fellow, a private in the Gordons, who never had his wound dressed; it was running all the time. He died of pure neglect and typhus. A man died next me with his clothes on, never had them off, even his greatcoat on. Our clothes were running with vermin--millions!

"You could not get dressings or bandages. I have seen men with open wounds who have had to wash their bandages, and hang them up to dry before they could put them on again.

"M'Donald volunteered as an orderly in the Typhus Ward, and when he came along he was only one day on duty when he took typhus. He got better, but declined because of the starvation diet. I had him out walking for a little bit up and down, but he was very weak, a living skeleton. He would fall down, and I told him to try and get up and walk a little bit. 'Oh, Jock,' he says, 'I'm no' fit.' 'Come on,' I said, 'try.' He got a parcel from home--one from his mother--just before he died. It was just from hunger and neglect.

"Things were getting that bad about the month of April that the Germans began to get a little afraid, and started a new hospital--about half a dozen of huts. It was isolated from the camp, and we moved there about the beginning of May.

"Things gradually got a little better after that, but January, February, and March were three awful months.

"The Germans did not come back into the camp till the month of August.

"After I was better of the typhus I was back in the same camp. All food was thrown over the barbed wire. Even packets were sent down the shoot. The Germans never came near; you would see them outside the wire. Just before the American Ambassador came there was a new thing for carrying down the food--something like a dustbin with a lid on. The shoot is still there, but is not used. After the Ambassador came we put in a claim, saying we had been passed as unfit for military service, and men who ought to have gone home last August had had it cancelled at the last moment; but we heard no more. The American Ambassador said that must be the Government's fault; he would see about it. He sent us a lot of games. We were only allowed to play games between the huts.

"The camp was run by the Russians, and nobody to look after us. The Germans never came in; you could do what you liked as long as you did not go too near the wire, when they used to sound the alarm. When the alarm sounded at night we had to run into the park, and if you did not get into the park soon enough they fired at you. They fired one night and killed six Frenchmen. One of the Royal Irish who came up with me had a bullet right past his ear,--I suppose it made him pretty nippy.

"We got no clean clothing or a change. The English were all in rags: you would not know they were soldiers at all to look at them. Just three days before the American Ambassador came, when they heard he was coming, they paraded us all up and looked at our underclothing. We got a shirt and a pair of socks to smarten us up. You could never get hot water; but the day that the American Ambassador came the Germans came round in the morning and told us that if any of us wanted hot water, to send two men out of each room to the cook-house and get as much boiling water as we wanted. We wondered what was up: we were saying there was something up that day. The Ambassador asked us what clothing we had. He made a great improvement: we got shirts and overcoats, but they took all our overcoats away.

"He asked a lot of men if they had had typhus; he seemed to know all about it. Just previous to that, a Mr Jackson from the American Embassy came. It is wonderful how things got about the camp. This was shortly after the typhus was cleared out, but he did not come into the camp. There were about thirty yards of space between the wires, and he could not speak to any of us; he just went round. There was a crowd of Germans; but when Mr Gerard came himself he came into the barrack-room and asked one man a question, then another.

"There was a German who could speak English, but he never came near them. Mr Gerard seemed to go about the thing very business-like: he was not afraid. He was very keen on getting hold of any man who had been out working and had come in again to camp. Some had not been paid. They were only paid 30 pfennigs (3d.) a day for a hard day's work. The camp was working at a big factory, and you had to get up at 4 in the morning, and they drove you into a big square like a sheep-pen and put all the English together. We called it the Slave Market. They drove you into this pen, and the gangers would come in the morning and take you out. 'I will have you,' and 'You come along with me,'--just like a slave market. We had to get up at 4 and went out at 5. You were put in the slave market at 5.30, and worked from then till 6 at night--and very hard work too. We were working on building a big factory where they were making hand-grenades--very intricate machinery. Nobody seemed quite to know what they were manufacturing there. The men were carrying the stone for the building. One German who could speak English told one of my chums that the factory was for making hand-grenades.

"They gave out an order that there was to be no smoking in the barrack-room, as the French had refused to allow German prisoners in France to smoke, so they would stop it there. If they caught a man smoking, and they had a stick, he got it. There were no orders printed to tell us what we had or had not to do. They never deliberately tied an Englishman to a post, but I have seen them doing it to Russians, tying them up to the post. If you did anything that did not please them, you were put in the coal-hole, we used to call it, the place where they get the coal-briquettes from, and kept without food for three days--only bread and water, solitary confinement. Many an Englishman got that. We used to carry down some of our dinner and slip it into them.

"The day the American Ambassador came, Captain Vidal looked well after it, and anything that was done he reported it at once. I think he had been saying something to the American Ambassador, and one of the Germans had overheard it. When the Ambassador went away, he struck Captain Vidal with his sword. We heard that was the reason why Captain Vidal did not come with us, as there was an inquiry about it at the time. Then Major Priestly was in solitary confinement for a while--I don't know what he had done; we heard that he was found with a revolver, but we could not say. He was isolated away from the officers altogether for close on two months--never saw him. He is back again in camp now. We read in the 'Continental Times' that he was going home on the 3rd September--or August--but some proceedings were being taken against him. It said in the 'Continental Times' misbehaviour,--I suppose in looking well after the wounded--or something like that.

"One day we had to pass the German doctor and then went back to barracks. Heard no more until six days afterwards, and the 1st December a German came up about 8 A.M. and formed us up in the barrack-room. Some of those going home had a new shirt given them. A Russian was stopped and told to take off his clogs and give them to that Englishman. Then we went to Aachen. A complaint had been sent to Wittenberg about us; they were kicking up a terrible row for sending us away like that. The officer commanding the camp asked us where we came from. When we said Wittenberg, he said he thought so. We looked such awful sights--filthy; and we were supposed to be dressed coming away. We were very well treated at Aachen--they always do so. Every one was nicer than another, to try and create a good impression. We knew what it was.

"I was sorry for two chaps. One of the London Scottish had been there fourteen months, and had a bad wound in his leg, and could not move his leg. He was sent back because he was a non-commissioned officer. Another man, a sergeant, with his leg off, could speak Hindustani, and I think that was the reason he was sent back, but I am not sure. His leg was off to the thigh. He was with the Lugard party. A lance-corporal, with his arm off, was also sent back, after thinking he was going to be exchanged. None of the non-commissioned officers got away from that place."

* * * * *

There is a corner of the hospital courtyard where in December the rays of the sun will fall for the space of an hour, illuminating first the big high wall which shuts off light and air from the north-west, then throwing upon the ground itself a triangle of light which gradually broadens, loses shape, and fills at last the narrow passage between the courtyard and the dead garden, but stops short of the broken wooden paling, throwing no cleansing ray on the dismal rubbish-heaps, leaving undisturbed the sepulchral clamminess of the shadows beyond.

In days of peace this corner was surely favoured by the school children. From the high wall to the gable of the main building stretches a single heavy beam, which had perhaps once been painted green, but was now green with the mould of decay. A few rusty rings and hooks, from one of which a piece of sodden rope still hung, showed to what purpose the beam had served.

The rain, which had been falling steadily, as it seemed, day and night during November, was checked by the first threat of frost, and during the fortnight before Christmas we had bright and cheerful weather. A few convalescent patients were tempted to take a seat in the sun, and came to notice the hour, early in the afternoon, when the triangle of light first strikes the high wall.

We had a bench placed against the wall (it was a very tiny one, and belonged to one of the junior classrooms). Picard, myself, and two French soldiers from Salle un were at first the only _habitués_; none of the British soldiers remaining at the 106 were able to leave their beds, and most of the other Frenchmen were either too weak or too frightened of fresh air to come out and sit in the yard.

It is a common failing of human nature to feel comforted at the sight of other people's misfortune. So it was that the sight of a French soldier who had been shot in the head aroused in me not only the interest of pity, but also, I must confess, a sense of superiority at finding some one worse off than myself. Jean was the name we called him by. No one knew his real name or his regiment, or the place where he was born, or any details of how he had been wounded. His wound in the head was on the left side, almost exactly in the same place as my own--the bullet had made the same furrow, all the symptoms were identical, the right leg dragging, the right arm hanging, the slow elephantine movement; but there was a difference, said Dr Debu, between the two points of impact. In the case of Jean the impact of the bullet was a hair's-breadth more to the front of the head, only the difference of perhaps a tenth of a millimetre. And so it was that poor Jean had lost not only the power of motion on the right side, but also speech, memory, and understanding.

All these faculties might return in time (doctors are optimists _par métier_), but at present understanding was limited to questions of the most primitive order--cold and heat, hunger and thirst; speech to a moan which signified no; memory to events of the past forty-eight hours, so that Jean knew nothing of the war, of his regiment, of his home; his face with his dropped jaw and vacant look was already the face of an idiot.

One morning in the refectory Jean fell off his chair on to the floor, grew purple in the face and foamed at the mouth. Urgent messengers flew off to fetch Dr Debu, and we all thought it was the end of Jean, until my nurse of the Salle cinq suggested epileptic fits, an opinion which was subsequently ratified by the doctor's verdict, "epilepsie Jacksonienne." Jean did not appear again in the yard until nearly a fortnight after this incident, and his place on the bench in the sun was taken by another whose name, according to his own statement, was "Mahamed, son of Mahamed."

Mahamed was still limping badly from a shot wound in the calf. He did not look more than nineteen, and came from near Oran. His knowledge of French was confined to "Merci le Madam," with a shining smile, and "Alleman grand cochon."

Mahamed, having discovered my knowledge of a few words of his native tongue and my acquaintance with his native country, followed me about like a shadow. For many months his feelings had perforce been suppressed, and now presuming too greatly on my supposed fluency in Arabic conversation, the poor fellow sat on the little bench in the sun pouring out his story.

We had the story nearly every day, and I began to put bits of it together. Of one thing he was quite certain, namely, that the "Alleman" was a pig and son of a pig, and that his other ancestors were of most infamous repute. In the mixed lingo of the bench, the same declaration was made every day at the close of the sitting, when the sun went behind the high wall: "Alleman no bon, kif kif cochon Yhoudi ben Yhoudi, Sheitan ben Sheitan, Halouf ben Halouf."

"Ça c'est tout de même vrai," said Picard the one-legged, patting his stump thoughtfully and pulling volcanoes of smoke from his clay pipe. "Alleman kif kif cochon." "Le Boche voyez vous," said Picard, addressing the bench party, which was slowly moving back to hospital, "le Boche ça a des petits yeux de cochon, c'est blanc et rose, comme le cochon, ça mange.... Ah, les Boches Halouf ben Halouf," and Picard hurriedly finished his discourse out of respect for M. le Vicaire-General, who had just joined the group.

"Bonjour, M. le Vicaire, you're just in time," I said. "Nous disions du mal de notre prochain." "Il n'y a pas de mal à ça, Monsieur le Curé," interrupted Picard, "puisque nous ne parlions que des Boches." "Voyons, M. le Curé," this aggressively, "the Gospel tells us to love our enemies. Do you love the Boches?" This question, and the spirit in which it was asked, was significant of the new atmosphere which had begun to permeate the Salle cinq after the arrival of the French soldier who had declared himself an enemy of fresh air. Gradually this man's evil influence pervaded the whole ward, just as the evil thing he stood for had permeated all France before the war.

M. le Vicaire-General came to the Salle cinq nearly every day, visiting each man's bedside, and no man, except one, however unspiritual his past, could resist the charm of the old priest, in whose smile shone an unselfish soul.

The "enemy of fresh air" was known to the British soldiers in the ward as "Judas Iscariot." When the priest came near his bed, Judas shook his head slightly and smiled an almost imperceptible smile, with all the air of saying, "La religion c'est pour les enfants, les femmes et les imbéciles."

It was some sneer from Judas that prompted Picard's question.

"Voyons, M. le Curé, aimez vouz les Boches?"

The old priest looked at Picard's honest troubled face and answered slowly--

"Mais puisque l'évangile nous ordonne de nous aimer les uns les autres et surtout d'aimer nos ennemis, il faut toujours faire son possible pour suivre ce divin conseil et je peux dire que j'aime les Boches--mais--chez eux--pas chez nous."

In Germany, just as in England, Christmas is kept with great feasting and rejoicing, and during the week preceding Christmas M. Vampouille was hard at work making sausages for his German customers, who were to hold a festive meeting at the Kommandantur. Great preparations were also being made at the 106, and the staff of the hospital, forgetting for the time being their private squabbles, joined with our friends in the town in preparing a Merry Christmas.

Christmas morning. Mass at 10 o'clock in Salle un. M. le Vicaire-General preaches a tactful sermon on "resignation." After Mass candles on the Christmas tree are lit and presents distributed.

The altar was erected at the extreme end of Salle un, and very artistically decorated with palms, laurel branches, and holly; behind the altar were two large flags (home-made) of England and France; on the right was a large Christmas tree.

All patients who were fit to be moved, except Judas Iscariot, were carried up from the Salle cinq and grouped near the altar. In the bed nearest the altar a British reservist lay with a shattered spine, still alive, still conscious, still able to speak, the lower half of his body lifeless since the 26th of August 1914. This was his last week on earth. "Here's a funny kind of Christmas," he whispered; "next Christmas we'll be at home, shan't we?"

On my right, close to the altar steps, sat Picard, beyond him Mahamed ben Mahamed looking puzzled and depressed, and at the end of the row a lady on crutches, dressed in deep mourning, who had lost a leg during the aeroplane fight in September. The other wounded were seated in beds, packed in double row, half-way down each side of the ward, the remainder of which was filled with friends from the town.

Madame Tondeur was busy in the kitchen with three turkeys to roast and carve into very small pieces, so that every one might get a taste. The plum pudding being very small, was reserved for the Salle cinq. Printed directions on the tin suggested that the pudding could be eaten cold or boiled for "half an hour." Perhaps this was a misprint for "half a day." After the half-hour's boiling, the pudding still seemed to have a compressed appearance, and looked very diminutive under its large stick of holly. Madame Tondeur herself carried the flaming pudding into the Salle cinq, divided it up into twelve portions, the indigestible but fortunately small fragments were duly eaten, and the ancient tradition of Christmas remained for us unbroken.

Between Christmas and the New Year it was decided that my name was to go down on the list of "transportables," and that I would have to join the next party for Germany. Thinking over the last few days spent at the 106 Hospital, I remember first of all the parting words of my nurse: "In days to come try and remember the bright side of your stay here and forget the days of darkness." And here I may say in plain words what I feel most deeply, although these words cannot be read for many months, perhaps years, by those to whom I would wish to address them.

Many a limbless British soldier owes his life to the surgeon of the Civil Hospital. The question in those days was not merely "Will an operation save life?" but rather, "Is there time to operate on those whose lives might be saved?" Dr Debu proved himself to be the man for such an emergency. United to great skill, he possessed great physical strength and powers of resistance to fatigue. For three days and three nights he operated almost without taking time for meals or sleep.

For the devoted kindness of the French doctors and nurses, both of the Hôpital Civil, the 106, and the other ten or twelve hospitals of Cambrai, who for many months under conditions of great difficulty and danger, without many of the most necessary medical appliances, worked night and day to save the lives of British soldiers and to ease the last moments of the mortally wounded, I feel that this very inadequate expression of gratitude must be set down.

There are many other kind friends at Cambrai whose kindness I can never forget.

Consider my situation at Cambrai: unknown, cut off from all intercourse with the world, about to start off for a German prison, and without a sixpence. I did not like to ask a loan from my kind friends, who had already given me a complete outfit of underclothing and toilet necessaries. On New Year's Day the subject of money was broached by M. Rey in a straightforward business-like manner. "You are shortly going to Germany," he said; "even in prison money is useful; you will need some money; we have brought you some." The sum M. Rey proposed to give me was £50! We decided that half this sum would be ample, and I gave M. Rey a receipt "payable après la guerre."

After these true friends in need had left, M. Vampouille came in to sit with me, and he made the same suggestion about money, and insisted on my accepting a further sum, the loan of which, he said, is granted on one condition only: "You must not pay me by cheque, you must come yourself--after the war!"

Next morning a decrepit omnibus driven by a German soldier came to take me from the Hôpital 106 to M. Brunot's Hôpital Annexe, from where, after three days, I was sent off to Germany.