cigarette would be inserted in Big
Boy's mouth just as you would stick a pin in a pin-cushion. Big Boy
would lie back comfortably and puff away like a Mississippi steamboat
for four or five minutes and then the door would open just a crack
again, the mysterious hand and arm would reach in once more and the
cigarette would be plucked out. That was the way Big Boy got his
"smokes."

If Big Boy's voice was gruff, there was still a gruffer voice that used
to come from a man in the corner of the ward to the left of my bed.
During the first four or five days I was an inmate of the ward, I was
most interested in all the voices I heard because I lay in total
darkness. The bandages extended down from the top of my head to my upper
lip, and I did not know whether or not I ever would see again. I would
listen carefully to all remarks within ear-shot, whether they be from
doctors, nurses or patients. I listened in the hope that from them I
might learn whether or not there was a possibility of my regaining
vision. But all of their remarks with regard to my condition were
ambiguous and unsatisfactory. But from this I gained a listening habit
and that was how I became particularly interested in the very gruff
voice that came from the corner on my left.

Other patients directing remarks into that corner would address them to
a man whom they would call by name "Red Shannahan." I was quick to
connect the gruff voice and the name "Red Shannahan," and as I had lots
of time and nothing else to do, I built up in my mind's eye a picture of
a tall, husky, rough and ready, tough Irishman, with red hair--a man of
whom it would be conceivable that he had wiped out some two or three
German regiments before they got him. To find out more about this
character, I called over to him one day.

"Red Shannahan, are you there?" I said.

"Yes, Mr. Gibbons, I'm here," came the reply, and I was immensely
surprised because it was not the gruff voice at all. It was the mild,
unchanged voice of a boy, a boy whose tones were still in the upper
register. The reply seemed almost girlish in comparison with the
gruffer tones of the other patients and I marvelled that the owner of
this polite, mannerly, high-pitched voice could be known by any such
name as "Red Shannahan." I determined upon further investigation.

"Red Shannahan, what work did you do before you became a United States
soldier?" I asked.

"Mr. Gibbons," came the reply, almost girlishly, "I am f