Punjabis, ever the leader of the dangerous patrols along the native bush
paths that give themselves so readily to ambush. Shot through the spine
and paralysed below the waist his life was only a question of months.
But if he had little time to live, he had determined to see it through
with a gay courage that was wonderful to see. Previously wounded in
France, he yet seemed, though he cannot possibly have been in ignorance,
to be buoyed up with the perfect faith in recovery with which fractured
spines so often are endowed; never asking me awkward questions, he made
it so easy for me to do his daily dressing, so grateful for small
attentions, and so ready to believe me when I told him that it was only
a question of weeks before he would be home again. And in spite of all
fears I have just heard he did get home to see his people, and by his
cheerful courage to rob Death of all his terrors.




MY OPERATING THEATRE AT HANDENI


Up the wide stone steps, under the arch of purple Bougainvillea and you
are in my operating theatre. A curtain of mosquito gauze screens it from
the vulgar gaze. Behind these big wooden doors a week ago was the office
of this erstwhile German jail. To the left and right, now all clean and
white painted, were the living rooms of the German jailor and his wife,
but for the present they are transformed into special wards for severely
wounded men. On the lime-washed wall and very carefully preserved is
"_Gott strafe England_" which the late occupants wrote in charcoal as
they fled. Strange how all German curses come home to roost, and move us
to the ridicule that hurts the Hun so much and so surely penetrates his