Excerpt from The Queen's Gift Book in Aid of Queen Mary's Convalescent Auxiliary Hospitals for Soldiers and Sailors Who Have Lost Their Limbs in the War The place I came to seemed a green and fortunate haven for the battered. Ah Ships you can refit, making them as good as new; but these four hundred men in their blueish hospital garb and their red neckties can never be made as good as new. You can only make shift for them, and do your best. Legs and arms, legs and arms they all want one or the other, and some want both. They have just passed to dinner - a long procession - in wheel chairs, on crutches, or walking strangely, the freshly fitted leg thrown out a little apart, stiffly as yet; or seemingly quite whole and active men, till you observe they have only one arm. One of them has lost two legs and an arm, another an arm and a leg and an eye. So they go, young, pathetically strong - cheerful fellows, wonderful fellows, stoics. Some one says: They're not worrying that's Tommy all over-never thinks of to-morrow. Well, it would seem the better ground-philosophy for armless men, legless men, who by no measure of thought for to-morrow will ever have two arms or legs, or even perhaps one, again. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.