At the Base Hospital they talk a good deal of "the Blighty Smile."
It's supposed to be the kind of look a chap wears when he's been told
that within twenty-four hours he'll be in England. When this
information has been imparted to him, he's served out with warm socks,
woollen cap and a little linen bag into which to put his
valuables. Hours and hours before there's any chance of starting
you'll see the lucky ones lying very still, with a happy vacant look
in their eyes and their absurd woollen caps stuck ready on their
heads. Sometime, perhaps in the small hours of the morning, the
stretcher-bearers, arrive--the stretcher-bearers who all down the
lines of communication are forever carrying others towards blessedness
and never going themselves. "At last," you whisper to yourself. You
feel a glorious anticipation that you have not known since childhood
when, after three hundred and sixty-four days of waiting, it was truly
going to be Christmas.

On the train and on the passage there is the same skillful
attention--the same ungrudging kindness. You see new faces in the
bunks beside you. After the tedium of the narrow confines of a ward
that in itself is exciting. You fall into talk.

"What's yours?"

"Nothing much--just a hand off and a splinter or two in the shoulder."

You laugh. "That's not so dusty. How much did you expect for your
money?"

Probably you meet some one from the part of the line where you were