Three Times and Out | Page 8

and over again that there would be lots of water there, and food
and clean clothes, and in this way I kept myself alive until we reached
Roulers.
CHAPTER III
INTO GERMANY
Roulers is a good-sized town in West Flanders, of about thirty thousand
population, much noted for its linen manufacture; and has a great
church of St. Michael with a very high tower, which we could see for
miles. But I do not remember much about the look of the town, for I
could hardly drag my feet. It seemed as if every step would be my last.
But I held on some way, until we reached the stopping-place, which
happened to be an unused school. The men who had not been wounded
had arrived several hours ahead of us.
When, at last, I sat down on one of the benches, the whole place
seemed to float by me. Nothing would stand still. The sensation was
like the water dizziness which makes one feel he is being rapidly
propelled upstream. But after sitting awhile, it passed, and I began to
recognize some of our fellows. Frost, of my own battalion, was there,
and when I told him I had had nothing to eat since the early morning of
the day before, he immediately produced a hardtack biscuit and scraped
out the bottom of his jam tin. They had been served with a ration of
war-bread, and several of the boys offered me a share of their scanty
allowance, but the first mouthful was all I could take. It was sour,
heavy, and stale.
The school pump had escaped the fate of the last pump I had seen, and
was in good working order, and its asthmatic creaking as it brought up
the stream of water was music in my ears. We went out in turns and
drank like thirsty cattle. I drank until my jaws were stiff as if with

mumps, and my ears ached, and in a few minutes my legs were tied in
cramps.
While I was vainly trying to rub them out with my one good hand, Fred
McKelvey came up and told me a sure cure for leg-cramp. It is to turn
the toes up as far as possible, and straighten out the legs, and it worked
a cure for me. He said he had taken the cramps out of his legs this way
when he was in the water.
I remember some of the British Columbia boys who were there.
Sergeants Potentier, George Fitz, and Mudge, of Grand Forks; Reid,
Diplock, and Johnson, of Vancouver; Munroe and Wildblood, of
Rossland; Keith, Palmer, Larkins, Scott, and Croak. Captain
Scudamore, my Company Captain, came over to where I sat, and
kindly inquired about my wounds. He wrote down my father's address,
too, and said he would try to get a letter to him.
There was a house next door--quite a fine house with a neat paling and
long, shuttered windows, at which the vines were beginning to grow. It
looked to be in good condition, except that part of the verandah had
been torn away. The shutters were closed on its long, graceful windows,
giving it the appearance of a tall, stately woman in heavy mourning.
When we were at the pump, we heard a gentle tapping, and, looking up,
we saw a very handsome dark-eyed Belgian woman at one of the
windows. Instinctively we saluted, and quick as a flash she held a
Union Jack against the pane!
A cheer broke from us involuntarily, and the guards sprang to attention,
suspecting trouble. But the flag was gone as quickly as it came, and
when we looked again, the shutters were closed and the deep, waiting
silence had settled down once more on the stately house of shutters.
But to us it had become suddenly possessed of a living soul! The flash
of those sad black eyes, as well as the glimpse of the flag, seemed to
call to us to carry on! They typified to us exactly what we were fighting
for!

After the little incident of the flag, it was wonderful how bright and
happy we felt. Of course, I know, the ministrations of the pump helped,
for we not only drank all we wanted, but most of the boys had a wash,
too; but we just needed to be reminded once in awhile of what the real
issues of the war were.
Later in the day, after we had been examined by another medical man,
who dressed our wounds very skillfully, and gently, too, we came back
to the school, and found there two heavily veiled Belgian women. They
had bars of chocolate for us, for which we were very grateful. They
were both in deep mourning, and seemed to have been women of high