I will begin on a _new_ sheet
the story of the last few months since my capture. You must
forgive me if it bores you. In reality it is for my parents, when
you have prepared their minds, and I don't think it will bore
them....
"We came a bad cropper. I was thrown clear of the machine,
but knew nothing until I waked up, feeling like a bag of broken
bones. It was night, and I saw a huge fountain of red flame and
a lot of dark figures like silhouettes moving between it and me.
That brought me out of my stupor. I knew my plane must have
taken fire as it crashed down, and I was pretty sure the silhouettes
were Germans. I looked around for my observer, and
called to him in a low voice, hoping the Bosch wouldn't hear,
over the noise of the fire. Nobody answered. Later I found out
that the poor chap had been caught under the car. I pray he
died before the flames reached him!
"As I got my wits back, I planned to try and hide myself under
some bushes I could see not far off, till the coast was clear; but I
couldn't move. I seemed to be thoroughly smashed up, and
began to think it was the end of things _ici-bas_ for me. After
a while I must have fainted. By and by I had a dream of jolting
along through a blazing desert, on the back of a lame camel. It
was rather fierce, that jolting! It shook me out of my faint, and
when I opened my eyes it was to find myself on a stretcher
carried by fellows in German gray.
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