Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
WOUNDED SOULS
PHILIP GIBBS
WOUNDED SOULS
BY
PHILIP GIBBS
AUTHOR OF “THE STREET OF ADVENTURE,”
“THE INDIVIDUALIST,” ETC.
NEW 
YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
| BOOK ONE | |
| PAGE | |
| THE END OF THE ADVENTURE | 9 |
| BOOK TWO | |
| THROUGH HOSTILE GATES | 143 |
| BOOK THREE | |
| BUILDERS OF PEACE | 241 |
BOOK ONE: THE END OF THE ADVENTURE
WOUNDED SOULS
BOOK ONE: THE END OF THE ADVENTURE
I
It is hard to recapture the spirit of that day we entered Lille.Other things, since, have blurred its fine images. At the time, Itried to put down in words the picture of that scene when, after fouryears’ slaughter of men, the city, which had seemed a world away, wasopen to us a few miles beyond the trenchlines, the riven trees, theshell-holes, and the stench of death, and we walked across the canal,over a broken bridge, into that large town where—how wonderful itseemed!—there were roofs on the houses, and glass in the windows andcrowds of civilian people waiting for the first glimpse of Britishkhaki.
Even now remembrance brings back to me figures that I saw only fora moment or two but remain sharply etched in my mind, and people Imet in the streets who told me the story of four years in less thanfour minutes and enough to let me know their bitterness, hatred,humiliations, terrors, in the time of the German occupation.... I havere-read the words I wrote, hastily, on a truculent typewriter which Icursed for its twisted ribbon, while the vision of the day was in myeyes. They[Pg 10] are true to the facts and to what we felt about them. Othermen felt that sense of exaltation, a kind of mystical union with thespirit of many people who had been delivered from evil powers. It is ofthose other men th