the hip, dislocating the hip bone. I was removed to the ship's hospital
and was under the doctor's care till morning, and from there I went to a
hospital in Plymouth City for six weeks. From there I was removed to the
field general hospital in Salisbury Plain, where I tarried an
additional ten days. While here I had a two-fold adventure.

The hospital was in a tent where I reclined with forty other patients,
and directly opposite our tent was another in which were confined under
guard a number of patients who were subject to fits, some of a very
serious nature. Lying in bed, my leg encased in its plaster-of-paris
cast, about ten o'clock one night, when just dozing off, I was
frightened into wakefulness by a scream. A man, who turned out to be an
escaped epileptic, was standing in the doorway screaming, his eyes
bulging out of his head. He had escaped by striking the sentry over the
head with the fire brazier, used to keep the sentry warm. Staring wildly
about the room for a couple of seconds, he made a leap for the nearest
man and bit him in the arm; he then jumped at the next patient, biting
him; I was the following recipient of his devotions, getting a bite on
the wrist. Utterly unable to help or defend myself, as I was bound down
in my plaster-of-paris cast, I had to content myself with landing a
couple of punches on his mad mug, but he didn't seem to mind them in the
least,--rather enjoyed them, I fancy.

By way of diversion he then took hold of the beds and started upsetting
them, rolling the patients out on to the floor, causing a tremendous
amount of excitement, as well as pain and suffering to the men upset
who, some of them, like myself, had casts on their limbs. In the midst
of his mad capers the guard and orderlies rushed in, but before he was
subdued he managed to fasten his molars in the arm of a guard.