TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

____won-
der what the hell I am to them. If ?d moved my head
an inch Tel be dead now, and what would the
patriots cure*? . . . Then I remember the kindly face
of my sen-ant, and see him putting my kit on to the
ambulance. 1 smile at him and say 'Back soon/ and
he promises to walk over to the C.C.S. next day with
my letters ^ind the latest news from the company. But
I'd gone when he got there. . . . They'd sent me on
to a place near St. Omer. If I'd kicked up a row and
refused to go they'd have thought I was dotty, espe-
cially with a head wound. Who ever heard of anyone
refusing to go down to the Base with a decent wound?
Now Tin at Boulogne trying to be hearty and well.
'It's only a scalp-graze,"1 say; but I dare not look the
doctor in the? face. It isn't all of me that wants to stay
in France* now.

"Nurses make a fuss over me till I scarcely dare to
behuvc like a healthy man.

"Awl still the memory of the Company haunts me
and wrings my heart, and I hear them saying 'When's
the Captain coining back?' It seems as if there's no-
thing to go back to iu England as long as the War
goes 011. I'p in the line I was at least doing something
real, and I had lived myself into a feeling of responsi-
bility— ineiiicient and impulsive though I was when
in close contact with the Germans. All that was
decent in me disliked leaving Velmore andHowitt
and the troops, Kut now I begin to tell myself that
perhaps half of them will be casualties by the time I
get back, and I ask how many officers there are in the
battalion who would refuse to go to England if it were
made easy lor them.

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