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I finally brought up in General Hospital Number 12 in Rouen. I was
there four days and had a real bath,--a genuine boiling out. Also
had some shrapnel picked out of my anatomy. I got in fairly good
shape, though still in a good deal of dull pain. It was a glad day
when they put a batch of us on a train for Havre, tagged for
Blighty. We went direct from the train to the hospital ship,
Carisbrook Castle. The quarters were good,--real bunks, clean
sheets, good food, careful nurses. It was some different from the
crowded transport that had taken me over to France.
There were a lot of German prisoners aboard, wounded, and we
swapped stories with them. It was really a lot of fun comparing
notes, and they were pretty good chaps on the whole. They were as
glad as we were to see land. Their troubles were over for the
duration of the war.
Never shall I forget that wonderful morning when I looked out and
saw again the coast of England, hazy under the mists of dawn. It
looked like the promised land. And it was. It meant freedom again
from battle, murder, and sudden death, from trenches and stenches,
rats, cooties, and all the rest that goes to make up the worst of
man-made inventions, war.
It was Friday the thirteenth. And don't let anybody dare say that
date is unlucky. For it brought me back to the best thing that can
gladden the eyes of a broken Tommy. Blighty! Blighty!! Blighty!!!
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