When I found that I couldn't pull her out of it I decided that the time had come to bale out. The usual motions failed to produce the desired results, but it is not easy to coordinate one's actions when one is being spun round like a pea in a top; so even then I did not realise the truth, and thought that it was some of my gear having got hitched up that prevented me from heaving myself free.
The last moments, while the earth seemed to be rushing up to smash me, were pretty ghastly, and I felt certain I was for it. I remember the words of the song 'so they scraped him off the tarmac like a pound of strawberry jam' flashing grimly through my mind; but, by a miracle, the old kite plunged straight into the only big tree within a mile. Her engine broke away and crashed through the branches to the ground, but I was left up there with my lower half imprisoned in the buckled shell of her body. Some farm labourers had seen me crash and were already running to my rescue. They fetched a ladder and hauled me out from among the wreckage. I was still perfectly compos mentis and told them that I could climb down out of the oak on my own; but the moment they let me take my own weight my feet slithered along the branch and my legs folded up under me.
They only just managed to catch me as I fell, so that was really the nearest I came that day to breaking my neck. There are times now when I almost wish that I had, as my broken back has put an end for me to most of the things that are worth doing in life.
It was on the 10th of July that I crashed, and after that I spent eight months in various hospitals; but the doctors all reached the same conclusion in the long run. It seems that the Jerry's bullet snipped a bit out of me that it is still beyond the art of medical science to replace. In the end the specialists broke it to me as gently as they could that there was nothing else they could do for me, and that there was little hope of my ever regaining the full use of my legs.
But there has never been the least suggestion that either the injury or the shock had in any way affected my brain. Personally, I am convinced that they did not, and that I am still perfectly sane. At least, I was when they brought me here in March and, apart from the events which caused me to start this journal, there has been nothing whatever since in my quiet invalid's routine to upset my mind.
Of course I have suffered, and do still suffer, a lot of pain; but that has had no more effect on me mentally than it has on the vast majority of poor fellows who are now suffering from agonising wounds owing to this bloody war. My hand is as steady, and my sight is as clear, as ever they were. I haven't become hesitant in my speech and I don't jump out of my skin if somebody bangs a door. My reasoning powers are unimpaired and I can justly claim that I am now far better at keeping my emotions under control than I was before the crash.
In fact, my own experience is that being a chronic invalid is about the best inducement one can have to practice self-discipline. Anyone in my position is entirely dependent on others, and therefore faced with two alternatives. Either they can allow their disability to become the centre of their thoughts, and on that account make life hell for themselves and everyone in frequent contact with them, or they can school themselves to ignore their misfortune as far as possible, and, by the exercise of endurance, patience and tact, at least secure the willing and cheerful service of those who are looking after them.
To adopt the latter course is just plain common sense, so I take no particular credit for having done so; but it needed a certain amount of willpower and is, I think a further proof that there has been no deterioration in my mental faculties.
But what chance is there of the Trustees believing that? I mean, if I write and tell them that I want to be moved from Llanferdrack because whenever the moon is near full an octopus tries to get in at my window? Naturally they will think I am gaga; and who could blame them?
They would send a bunch of brain specialists and psychoanalysts down here to examine me; and before I could say Jack Robinson I should find myself popped in a mental home to be kept under observation. For airing fancies far less lurid than that of being hunted over dry land by an octopus plenty of people have been carted off to those sort of places; and once in it is not so easy to get out again. No, thank you. I am not going to risk that. Not while I have a kick left in me.
(Laughter!) Hollow laughter as they say in Parliamentary reports caused by the simile I used inadvertently. Its inappropriateness must be an all-time high, in view of the fact that for the past ten months I have not been able to so much as waggle my big toe.
Later
An extraordinary thing has happened. This morning I decided that I would go fishing. It is the only sport in which I can still indulge, but I haven't had much luck so far. I have caught only a few bream and perch, and what I am after is one of the big pike; so today I thought I would try the far end of the lake, and I made Deb wheel me round there.
Deb is hardly what one would call an 'outdoor' girl, and she always looks awkward sitting on the grass reading one of her highbrow books. So, when she had settled me and wedged stones under the wheels of my chair so that it couldn't move, I said to her:
"There's no need to stay here if you don't want to. Why not walk back to the garden and sit in the summerhouse? You'll be much more comfortable there, till it's time for you to come and fetch me in for lunch.'
She thought that a good idea, so off she went. The drive approaches the Castle at that end of the lake and crosses a small stone bridge from which I was fishing. Deb had been gone only about ten minutes when I spotted the postman coming up from the village. I called to the old chap and asked him if he had any letters for me. He had one, and gave it to me as he passed. It was from Julia.
It was written from Queensclere and dated the 10th of May yet Helmuth told me only last night that Uncle Paul had taken her up to Scotland a week ago!
More extraordinary still, it said not a word about any plan for going there, or that she was feeling done in from war strain; and it made no reference whatever to any of my recent letters to her. In fact, while acknowledging that she was hopelessly erratic about letter writing herself and excusing her slackness on the plea that she had so much to do, she reproached me with having all the time in the world on my hands yet leaving it for so long without letting her hear from me.
For the rest, there were several pages in her firm, round hand recounting the excitements of the last local air raid, a battle with the War Agricultural Committee owing to her refusal to have the lawns ploughed up, and an unauthorised visit to Dover, with one of the officers billeted at Queensclere, to get a peep through a telescope at the activities on the nearest bit of Hitler's Europe.
After skimming through all this light-hearted chatter I only pretended to go on fishing, and sat there with my brain revving round like a dynamo, right up till lunchtime.
It was by the merest fluke that I had intercepted the postman this morning. I have never even seen him before, and it is the first time since my arrival that I have been down to the far end of the lake. Had I not been there when I was I think it extremely unlikely that Julia's letter would ever have been delivered to me; and that belief is supported by the fact that in it she mentions another letter of hers, written about April 25th, which I have never received.