any chances of going
to the front. One day the men played a trick on him. When he came into
the dining-room to ask if there were any complaints one of them picked up
a dish which was steaming hot and said: "Look here, sir! What do you
think of this?" He picked up a spoon and tasted it. "Why, my man,
that's very good soup! You're lucky to get such good food." "But, sir,
it's not soup, it's dish-water!" (Curtain.)

At last the Medical Board sat on my case and their decision left me
gasping for breath, for they recommended that I be discharged as
permanently unfit for further military service. But nature sometimes
plays sorry pranks with medical decisions. Not more than a week after
this, movement suddenly returned to my leg and I threw away my crutches
and was able to walk almost as well as ever. About ten days after
leaving hospital I had sailed back for France via America, but have not
at the time of writing been able to get across the Atlantic.

CHAPTER XXXI

USING AN IRISHMAN'S NERVE

I have been saving this for a separate chapter; for besides a natural
hesitation in admitting that I am not "all there," I want to have
sufficient space in which to express my gratitude to the doctor who
performed the operation and to the "unknown" who had his leg amputated,
so providing me with a portion of his anatomy that I was in sore need
of. Of course, in these days when surgical miracles are happening
continually there is nothing outstanding about this operation, and
surgeons have wonderful opportunities in a military hospital, where
there are so many spare human parts lying about to patch up a man with.
I quite believe that from three smashed men they could make a whole
one, which, after all, would not be such a marvel when one remembers
that they are continually grafting bones and nerves, and I for one
would not like to say that in the next war they may not be able to cure
a man who has lost his head entirely, and as a matter of fact, one of
the San Francisco papers informed its readers (and as in this country
the impossible of yesterday happens to-day, no doubt they believed it
to be true) that I had had another man's leg grafted onto me. After
such a statement it is an anti-climax to have to inform the public that
it was only a portion of nerve that was grafted.

I had been lying in hospital several weeks before I got worried about
the fact that I could not move my leg. Then when the great-hearted,
pla