Eric was wounded the 20th of May at 5 a.m. The bullet entered the neck just under the larynx, slightly at the left side of its vertical axis and went out at the dorsal right side of the neck’s base. It was a normal 7 mm bore, copper-plated Spanish Mauser bullet, shot from a distance of some 175 yards. At this range, it still had a velocity of some 600 feet per second and a cauterising temperature. Under the impact, Eric fell on his back. The hemorrhaging was insignificant. After dressing at a first aid post some half a mile from the actual line, he was transferred to Barbastro and then to the Hospital of Lérida, where I saw him with Eileen some 50 hours after his having been wounded.

Eric’s general state was some sort of excellent; the temperature (taken in the left arm-pit) had never reached 37°C. Eric complained about his right arm aching from the shoulder down to the tip of the middle finger along a humero-cubital line and about a pain, according to himself severe but not unbearable, in the left side some where between the ultimate rib and the spleen. His voice was hoarse and feeble, but covering all the practical purposes of conversational speech. Breathing absolutely regular. Sense of humour untouched.

At the Hospital in Lérida, Eric only received an external treatment of his wound. After a couple of days, the dressing of the entrance wound could be dispensed with. He remained at this Hospital, under care of Dr. Farré, up to the 27th when he was transferred to Tarragona.

Dr. Farré told me on the 22^d of May that no essential organ had been touched by some sort of unexplainable luck; he admitted that the pain in the arm might be produced by abrasion of one of the arm’s main nerves and that the pain in the left side was probably due to hitting the ground when falling from his tremendous height. He told me that there was nothing to fear about the basic wound.

We had Eric ordered to be evacuated from Tarragona to Barcelona and went to fetch him the 29th of May; we found him with a semi-complete aphorisia¹ and a slight fever. The pain in the left side had disappeared in due course. The one in the arm (supposed of nervous origin) subsisted unchanged. The doctor at Tarragona’s Hospital had told Eric on that very morning that his larynx was ‘broken’ and that he would never recover a normal voice. In fact, Eric was able to utter any articulate sound but feebly and with the characteristic, grinding, noise of the brakes of a model T, very antiquated, Ford; his speech was inaudible outside a range of two yards.

Eric reached the sanatorium Maurín in Barcelona on the 29th at 10 p.m., having travelled 60 miles in a saloon-car without any special accommodation. His temperature reached at 11 p.m. 37.8°C (in left armpit); he received an aspirin and went immediately to bed, without any meal.