Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Leaves from a Field Note-Book by John Hartman Morgan
page 71 of 229 (31%)
the bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees. The next moment he
was up against a little knot of grey-coated figures with toy-like
helmets, he heard a word that sounded like "Himmel," and he had emptied
his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing,
parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very
faint....

That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For
the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense
distance--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was
coming to after a spell of gas--was saying something to him as he seemed
to be rising, rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable
depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and
then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at
the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent thing in
woman--was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was
impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew--he was in
hospital.


III

"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a
certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field
Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious
case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making
hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up
all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had
been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking.
Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and
DigitalOcean Referral Badge