The commander of the 180th Regiment not only allowed stretcher-bearers to take away the British wounded, but sent some of his own medical men to help them. By the morning of July 3 the last of the wounded were got away. Phillip, between periods of semi-consciousness following bouts of pain from the burns of phosphorus, and a greater drag of thirst, managed to crawl back on the afternoon of the first day, obsessed by one idea: he must get back for the sake of his mother. He could not walk, because another bullet had gone through his left boot, penetrating the metatarsal arch. On his way back through no-man’s-land he passed Pimm, lying dead among others whose lips and eyelids and wounds were already yellow-edged with blowfly eggs. He saw many rats, too. After a rest, brow on earth, he released the pigeons fluttering in the basket. Whether or no they flew back to their loft, he never knew. At one period on the crawl back he seemed to be hearing the bell-like colours of wildflowers with startling clearness—field scabious, poppies, marigolds, small pansies, and others he did not remember having seen before; and about these flowers were wild bees and grasshoppers, scarlet soldier flies, and bronze beetles among the grasses.
