They used to give him aspirin, and though it generally failed to bring sleep, his pains would be relieved almost instantly, and his spirits would rise to tremendous heights.  The only time he was able to sleep seemed to be between six and ten.  He was nearly always awakened by the lusty voice of a peasant entering the room beneath.  He complained to the Orderly, with the result that the next night the lusty voice was suddenly silenced.

“Shut yer mouth, or I’ll knock yer blinking face in!” And Lusty Voice understood.

* * * * *

At last the Doctor gave his consent for removal to the Base Hospital, and the Subaltern found himself being once more hauled on to a stretcher and heaved into the Ambulance.

They dragged him out at the station, and he saw the long train, each carriage brilliantly lit.  The sight seemed so civilised that it cheered him not a little.

The carriage was an ordinary “wagon-lit” converted with considerable ingenuity into a Hospital Train.  He shared his compartment with a young Guardee, “a sitting case.”

He had no sooner settled down than a voice was heard calling for “Second-Lieutenant Hackett.”

“Here,” replied the Guardee, without any enthusiasm.

A dapper Staff Officer, so tall that he had to stoop to enter the compartment, drew a paper from his pocket.

“You?” he asked.  “Well, Hackett, this is a great evening in your life, and I congratulate you.”  He shook the Guardee’s left hand.  “You have been given the D.S.O.,” he added hurriedly, for the train had already begun to move.  With that he disappeared.

It was not until the following morning that the Sister came in to dress his wound.

“What strong teeth you’ve got, boy!” she said.

Nobody knew better than he did that his teeth were large and tended to protrude, but it is always annoying to have one’s defects admired.

The Orderly was, in his way, an artist.  He was light-handed, quick, deferential, and soothing—­a prince among Orderlies.  He produced wonderful tit-bits—­amongst other things tinned chicken, sardines, chocolate, and, for the Guardee, stout!  Three minutes after the Sister had strictly forbidden him to read, the Orderly smuggled into his hand the Paris Daily Mail of the day before.  Von Moltke had been dismissed.  “The first of the great failures,” he said to himself.  But the Sister was right; it was too painful to read.

“What are we stopping here for?” the Guardee asked once.

“To unload the dead, sir,” replied the Orderly, with serious suavity.

The journey took over two days.  They touched at Versailles and Le Mans, the Advanced Base, swept slowly down the broad valley of the Loire, past the busy town of Nantes, followed by the side of the estuary, oddly mixed up with the shipping, and eventually came to rest in the town of St. Nazaire, at that time the Base of the British Army.