S.O.S. Stand to! | Page 5

world memorable retreat at Mons, when Britain's little regular army, denominated by His Majesty, Wilhelm II, "The contemptible little English army," was practically wiped out.
In the cookhouse we listened, open-mouthed, to the wonderful exploits of this Scotch fighting man. "Were you wounded?" asked Lawrence. "Aye, laddie, you're damned right I was," and he rolled up his trouser leg and exhibited a large, broad scar on the inside of his right leg. "There's where I got it."
"That's a funny looking wound,--looks like a burn," said Lawrence.
"You're damned right it's a burn," said Scotty, "it was the shell that burned me as it grazed my leg."
The probable reason, I thought, why the shell could graze the inside of one of his legs without injury to the other was because the fighter was blessed with a pair of bow-legs that couldn't have stopped the proverbial pig in the proverbial alley. In addition to this decided detraction from his manly beauty, he was short, squatty, thick-necked, a nose of the variety commonly known as a stub, and a couple of little eyes that had a constant twinkle, half-shrewd and half-humorous, the whole surmounted with a shock of shaggy red hair. But these detractions from his beauty did not in the least lessen our admiration for his personal bravery; he was in our eyes a first-class fighting man; he had proven it by his work at Mons and had the scar to show for it.
"But how did you come to get into a Canadian unit?" asked another.
"Well, you see, after I was wounded in the leg and got my honorable discharge, as soon as I was well, I wanted to do my bit again, and knowing that you laddies get bigger pay than in the British army, I thought I would kill two birds wi' the one stone,--get more money and get into the game again. So I ups and goes to the Colonel and says I, 'Colonel, I'd like to get into the game again.' 'Well,' says he, 'I hae na room for any more men in my command, but I do want a gude cook,' an' it just happened that I was a cook by trade, and a gude one too, and told him so, and says he, 'Well, you're just the man I want,' and he signed me up there and then, and here I am."
He was a good cook and he was proud of it too; we had no reason to complain of the way our meals were prepared. There was only one thing about Scotty that caused a shade of dissatisfaction,--he was so scrupulously careful to see that no man got more than his just share of the grub that many a fellow grumbled about not getting enough to eat and, in many cases, that they did not get what was coming to them. But Scotty would shut them with the authority of an old soldier and, besides, in his cookhouse he was monarch of all he surveyed. In a half-humorous, half-scolding voice he would say, "Mon, what do you want to be a hog for? Do you want to let someone else gang hungry? Tak' what's given ye and thank God you're alive to eat it, because it won't be long maybe before you'll be where ye won't need any grub--although undoubtedly you'll need water."
This was an allusion to our probable future abode. So we had to be content with what he chose to serve us. But there were speculations by some as to whether or not Scotty really served us all the grub given him by the quartermaster's department, and someone was so unjust, I thought, as to venture the suggestion that he believed "the damned Scotch runt is selling the grub to men in other units." "How does it happen," said he, in support of his suspicion, "that he always has a little change when the rest of us are broke?"
"Oh, nonsense," said I, "a good soldier wouldn't do such a thing, and we all know he is a good soldier; there is no getting away from that."
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST NIGHT
I arrived in France early in February, 1915, and for three weeks we were put into the hands of an Imperial battery, the Warwicks. They had taken part in the battle of Mons, and the tales of the veterans of this world's memorable retreat, told in their own modest way, gave me my first clear impression as to what the boys of the Imperial Army really had endured for civilization in that campaign.
At first I thought they were trying to bluff us Colonials, but the first night I was in the lines I realized in the largest degree of human intensity the fearful truth of their experiences.
The tuition given us by these warriors could not be excelled.