“You won’t lose it if I can help it. How’s your pulse?⁠ ⁠… Oh, not bad. Keep cheerful and we’ll pull you through.” The man smiled gallantly.

“Bound to come off,” said the doctor as we passed to another bed. “Gas gangrene. That’s the thing that does us down.”

In bed after bed I saw men of ours, very young men, who had been lopped of limbs a few hours ago or a few minutes, some of them unconscious, some of them strangely and terribly conscious, with a look in their eyes as though staring at the death which sat near to them, and edged nearer.

“Yes,” said the M.O. , “they look bad, some of ’em, but youth is on their side. I dare say seventy-five percent will get through. If it wasn’t for gas gangrene⁠—”

He jerked his head to a boy sitting up in bed, smiling at the nurse who felt his pulse.