At first I said, "I know why they're so cheerful--it's because they're
all here in one ward together. They're all mutilated more or less, so
they don't feel that they're exceptional. It's as though the whole
world woke up with toothache one morning. At breakfast every one would
be feeling very sorry for himself; by lunch-time, when it had become
common knowledge that the entire world had the same kind of ache,
toothache would have ceased to exist. It's the loneliness of being
abnormal in your suffering that hurts."

But it wasn't that. Even while I was confined to the hospital, in
hourly contact with the chaps, I felt that it wasn't that. When I was
allowed to dress and go down West for a few hours everyday, I knew
that I was wrong most certainly. In Piccadilly, Hyde Park, theatres,
restaurants, river-places on the Thames you'd see them, these men who
were maimed for life, climbing up and down buses, hobbling on their
crutches independently through crowds, hailing one another cheerily
from taxis, drinking life joyously in big gulps without complaint or
sense of martyrdom, and getting none of the dregs. A part of their
secret was that through their experience in the trenches they had
learnt to be self-forgetful. The only time I ever saw a wounded man
lose his temper was when some one out of kindness made him remember
himself. A sudden down-pour of rain had commenced; it was towards
evening and all the employees of the West End shopping centre were
making haste to get home to the suburbs. A young Highland officer who
had lost a leg scrambled into a bus going to Wandsworth. The inside of
the bus was jammed, so he had to stand up clutching on to a strap. A
middle-aged gentleman rose from his seat and offered it to the
Highlander. The Highlander smiled his thanks and shook his head. The
middle-aged gentleman in his sympathy became pressing, attracting