torn flesh, and bits of bone tied up in blood-sodden linen parcels. Some
had deep holes in their backs, others had gashes in their heads from
which soft, pink matter oozed.

Before me lay a man with a blackened face, a shattered knee, and
festering holes all over his body. Gas-gangrene had set in and the
stench was almost unendurable. The surgeon gently felt the injured leg,
but the man gave such long-drawn piercing shrieks that he had to be left
alone. He was sent to the resuscitation ward to recover strength a
little, for he was very weak through loss of blood. In the evening he
began to rave--he asked for whisky in a boisterously jovial voice, and
then he yelled and cried: "Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant, you've ruined
my career." In the night he died.

The wounded were often perfectly silent. But more often they would groan
or wail or shout. Sometimes they would all howl in chorus like cats on a
roof. Indeed the weird and terrible howling of wounded men is more like
the howling of cats than any other sound I know.

Men regaining consciousness after an operation would sometimes laugh
uproariously or cackle fiendishly. Or they would break into torrents of
filthy language. One man yelled in a crazy voice that England was the
most glorious country on earth and that he had done his best to be a
good soldier. Then he was seized by a fit of violent weeping, while
someone at the other end of the theatre was shouting with intense fury:
"If I had Lloyd George here, I'd shoot the blighter," and another man
was carried out with his head lolling from side to side and saying in
mad, amiable tones: "Zig-zag, zagazig, zig-zag," and so on without a
break.