Wheatley insisted on putting a bass bag full of cockles into the lorry before I left, and when I got to camp I ran to the cook-house thinking how they would welcome a variation for supper.

“Cockles?” asked Bridget.  “Humph, I suppose you know they grow on sewers and people who eat them die of ptomaine poisoning?” “No,” I said, not at all crestfallen, “do they really, well I’ve just eaten a whole bag full!  If they give me a military funeral I do hope you’ll come,” and I departed, feeling rather hurt, to issue further invitations.

I was drawing petrol at the Stores the next day and as I was signing for it the man there (my Charlie Chaplin friend) kindly began to crank up.

As he did so I saw Little Willie move gently forward, and ran out to slip the gear back into “neutral.”

“It’s a Hun and called ‘Little Willie,’” I explained as I did so.

“Crikey, wot a car,” he observed, “no wonder you calls it that.  Don’t you let him put it acrosst you, Miss.”

“He’s only four more days to do it in,” I thought joyfully, as I rattled off to the Quay, and yet somehow a premonition of some evil thing about to happen hung over me, and again I wished I hadn’t lost my charm.

The next day was Wednesday, and I had been up since 5 and was taking a lorry-full of stretchers and blankets past a French Battery to the E.M.O.’s.  It was about midday and there was not a cloud in the sky.  Then suddenly my heart stood still.  Somehow, instinctively, I knew I was “for it” at last.  Whole eternities seemed to elapse before the crash.  There was no escape.  Could I urge Little Willie on?  I knew it was hopeless; even as I did so he bucketed and failed to respond.  He would!  How I longed for Susan, who could always be relied upon to sprint forward.  At last the crash came.  I felt myself being hurled from the car into the air, to fall and be swept along for some distance, my face being literally rubbed in the ground.  I remember my rage at this, and even in that extreme moment managed to seize my nose in the hope that it at least might not be broken!  Presently I was left lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.  My first thought, oddly enough, was for the car, which I saw standing sulkily and somewhat battered not far off.  “There will be a row,” I thought.  The stretcher bearer in behind had been killed instantaneously, but fortunately I did not know of this till some time later, nor did I even know he had jumped in behind.  The car rattled to such an extent I had not heard the answer to my query, if anyone was coming with me to unload the stretchers.

I tried to move and found it impossible.  “What a mess I’m in,” was my next thought, “and how my legs ache!” I tried to move them too, but it was no good.  “They must both be broken,” I concluded.  I put my hand to my head and brought it away all sticky.  “That’s funny,” I thought, “where can it have come from?” and then I caught sight of my hand.  It was all covered with blood.  I began to have a panic that my back might be injured and I would not be able to ride again.  That was all that really worried me.  I had always dreaded anything happening to my back, somehow.