Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge

by G. Harvey Ralphson

Irving slept under an anæsthetic during the operation. He objected at first to the administration of ether, but the surgeon insisted.

"I don't want you to make any trouble," he insisted. "Remember you're not a scientific youth and might do something ridiculous. If I'm going to perform this operation you must take orders and obey them."

That settled it; Irving acquiesced. When he recovered consciousness he found himself in a hospital bed with his left arm bandaged and feeling a good deal like a limb of a tree, or anything else with a like degree of life. He remained in bed until the next morning, when his arm was put in a sling and he was permitted to move about as he pleased, although directed to remain in the hospital. Two days later he was allowed to leave the institution, but was instructed to return daily for examination and redressing of the graft.

He returned at once to the intelligence office and reported the success of the operation. The chief surgeon had informed him that his arm might be taken out of the sling in about a week.

During this period Irving was in the office much of the time, although he was able to be of little service with the use of only one arm. Still, he found it possible to add a good deal to his knowledge of the system of which the government was planning to make him an important agent, and this was, on the whole, quite satisfactory to him.

The youthful spy's plans for carrying out his mission for the British government had been developing rapidly since he became a member of the staff in the German intelligence office. And not a little of this development had been quite unforeseen by him. His original plans, therefore, underwent considerable change as time and experience advanced.

For instance, he decided not to attempt to make a list of names of leading enemy agents in the United States and Canada to take back with him. This had been his original purpose. He now regarded it as unwise, unsafe. He would depend on his memory to retain a store of information of this kind. So he watched and examined and probed and memorized, going over the information he had accumulated many times in his leisure hours in order to keep it fixed and unmistakable in his mind.

"I think I could go back to school and memorize history dates as I never did before," he told himself one evening about a week after the skin-grafting operation. "Gee! I never realized I had such a memory. I can run off a string of dope as long as the tune the old cow died on, just like saying the ABC's."

Irving had forgotten the "tune the old cow died on," but the expression stuck in his mind as a relic of nursery days.

One of the divisions of service in the intelligence department that interested the spy particularly was the telegraphic division. It came as an intermediate grade in his course of instruction, and he was required to learn to read the ticking of the telegraph instrument. Fortunately, a few years before, he had learned the alphabet while amusing himself with an amateur wireless outfit, and it now required comparatively little time for him to develop a fair degree of proficiency as a key-listener.