"How came you to be hurt, lad?" I asked.
"Well, sir," he said, "we were attacking one morning. I went over the
parapet with the rest, and got to the German trench all right. I
wasn't hurt. And I went down, thirty feet deep, into one of their
dugouts. You wouldn't think men could live so--but, of course,
they're not men--they're animals! There was a lighted candle on a
shelf, and beside it a fountain pen. It was just an ordinary-looking
pen, and it was fair loot--I thought some chap had meant to write a
letter, and forgotten his pen when our attack came. So I slipped it
in my pocket.
"Two days later I was going to write a few lines to my mother and
tell her I was all right, so I thought I'd try my new pen. And when I
unscrewed the cap it exploded--and, well, you see me, Harry! It blew
half of my face away!"
The Hun knows no mercy.
I was glad to see Boulogne again--the white buildings on the white
hills, and the harbor beyond. Here the itinerary of the Reverend
Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, came to its formal end. But, since there
were many new arrivals in the hospitals--the population of a base
shifts quickly--we were asked to give a couple more concerts in the
hospitals where we had first appeared on French soil.
A good many thousand Canadians had just come in, so I sang at Base
Hospital No. 1, and then gave another and farewell concert at the
great convalescent camp on the hill.
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