tenderly carried off the train and put
into motor ambulances. The road was very rough, and at every jolt we
would all swear. Then, to our amazement, a lady's voice said, "I'm
sorry, boys, but the road is rough." I looked up and there, driving
the ambulance, was a young lady. Gee! we did feel ashamed. Finally we
arrived at our destination and were carried into a big base hospital.
It was an American hospital, and it sure seemed like heaven after what
we had been through. They soon fixed up my leg, and then I had nothing
to do but watch the nurses. They were the most efficient doctors and
nurses I ever saw; everything in the hospital moved like clockwork.
After a few days they set my leg and put it in splints and then I
waited for my ticket to Blighty; but my troubles were not quite over.
One day the German aeroplanes came over, and next night they came again
and bombed our hospital. Oh, it was awful--worse than the front lines.
They dropped six bombs, killed a doctor, wounded some nurses, and
killed and wounded many of the boys. I lay in bed hanging onto the
pillows and listened to the crash of the bombs, and the screams of the
wounded. I hope I will never hear the like again. One of the bombs
came through the tent I was in, but didn't explode. The minute the
Huns were gone the doctors and nurses were around looking after the
boys, soothing those who were shaken and attending the ones who were
injured. There was no excuse for the bombing of this hospital; it was
plainly marked with the Red Cross, and no one could mistake it for an
ammunition dump. A few days more, and I was shipped across to dear old
Blighty and three months of heaven. It was worth all I had gone
through to be treated as we all were over there. I was in several
hospitals, and it was the same in all--they were just as good to us as
our own people could have been. The X-ray showed fifty-six pieces of
tin in my leg. As the doctor remarked, "You are a regular mine, and I
think we will let you take your fifty pieces back to Canada; it would
destroy too many nerves to dig them out, and in time they will work up
to the surface."

So, here I am back in Canada, a civilian with fifty-six pieces of iron
in my leg to remind me that I spent Two Years in Hell.

Your chum,
BOB.

THE RED, RED ROAD TO HOOGE

You're on parade, go get your spade,
Fall in, the shovel and pick brigade,
There's a carry fatigue, for half a league,
An