wash the men, barely enough for cooking and for surgical dressings, but
there were silk bedspreads and eiderdown quilts and all the treasures of
German sitting-rooms. And the fact that they were taken from the Germans
was balm to these wounded men.

There was Murray, a regimental sergeant-major, his leg badly broken by
the lead slug from a German Askari's rifle, ever the fore-most at the
padre's services, chanting the responses and leading all the hymns. And
Wehmeyer, the young Boer, who had accidentally blown a great hole
through his leg above the ankle joint. And Green, the Rhodesian sergeant
who had been brought in, almost _in extremis_, with blackwater. Nor was
his condition improved by the experience of having been blown up in the
ambulance by a land mine, hidden in the thick dust of the road. Thrown
into the air by the force of the explosion, the car had turned over on
him and the driver, who was killed. And there was Becker the blue-eyed
German prisoner with a bullet through his femoral artery and his hip.
Blanched from loss of blood before I could tie the vessel and stanch the
bleeding, his leg suspended in our improvised splints, and on his way to
make a splendid recovery. And Taube, another German prisoner, shot
through the abdomen, and recovering after his operation. Gentle and
conciliatory, with eyes of a frightened rabbit, he was the son of the
great Taube, the physiologist of Dresden.

Cheek by jowl, in the best bed, was Zahn, the hated Ober-Leutenant,
loathed by his own men, one of whom wrote in his diary that he loved to
see the bombardment of Tanga, "for Zahn was there, the ----, and I hope
he'll meet a 12-inch shell." Jealous of his officer's prerogative, and
disinclined to be nursed in the same ward with our soldiers and his own,
he gave a lot of trouble, demanding inordinately, victimising our
orderly, unashamedly selfish. But he was sheltered from my wrath by the