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62 THE BAGGING 'OF BAGHDAD

The doctor stopped his cheerful whistling
and busied himself with the cases at hand.
His first was a hopeless one ; a private had
received a bad shrapnel wound in the head.
His head looked less like a head than a
dreadful mess of blood, hair and bone. The
stretcher-bearers held him in mid-air awaiting
orders.
" All right ; put him down there/' said the
doctor, and he covered up the man's face with
a square of cotton gauze. For two hours the
patient breathed stertorously, with a noise that
was half a snore and half a gurgle. Then he
gave a great sigh, his chest expanded till it lifted
his body from the ground, and he fell back
dead.
I reflected tritely that a few hours ago this
man was strong and fit, with fifty years of life
before him. He had written home hoping his
mother was well as it left him at present.
There was probably a girl somewhere who
would have to be told. . . . And at the same
time I realized I had no right to view the man's
death sympathetically, because any such ap-
proach to sentiment would disqualify me for
things essentially unsentimental — hard, callous



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SENSATION 63

things. In short — battle. I realized, more-
over, that these other officers, so far from giving
a thought to death, were deliberately refusing
to recognize it, refusing even to acknowledge it
as a possibility, as a thing which could overtake
themselves. I concluded that I must do the
same. It was evidently part of the business of
war to dress the soul in a garment of iron.
