Endel Street Hospital, London. Rip Van Winkle himself came back with no more wonderment. The sergeant awoke, a soldier literally in the hands of women.
He couldn't so much as bathe his own face. A woman in a white headdress, with a red cross in the centre of her forehead, was doing it for him. When he opened his eyes again, a girl orderly in a blue tunic was saying, "You can smoke if you want to." And she began propping pillows softly about his shoulders. There was a queer numb feeling along his side. He couldn't find his right hand. "Never mind," the girl said hastily. She placed the cigarette between his lips and held the lighted match. He smoked and began to remember that he had gone over the top. He pulled gently again for his right hand. He tried to draw up his left leg. At the least movement, somewhere outside the numb, tight bound area of him, there were answering stabs and twinges of pain. He wanted to flick the ashes from his cigarette. As he turned his head and his left hand found the tray on the little bedside stand, he glimpsed a long row of cherry red comforters that undulated in irregular lines. From where he lay, he could see still, white faces, bandaged heads, an arm in a sling, a man in a convalescent uniform clumsily trying out crutches. The man in the very next bed to his own lay moaning with face upturned to the light, hollow, empty, staring sockets where the eyes had been. In the bed beyond was a man with his face sewed up in an awful twisted seam
