The smell was overpowering. Venner dropped his pencil and clapped his hands to his face saying, "Wait a minute, Colonel, the smell of that shell makes my head ache." I looked at him and saw he had turned very pale. Looking more closely I noticed blood trickling down the side of his face between his fingers. I snatched his Glengarry off his head and sure enough a jagged piece of shell had cut through the Glengarry and ripped a gash in his scalp about two inches long.
I pulled the piece of steel out and said, "No wonder the shell makes your head ache! You are wounded."
In a trice I had my scissors out, and cutting the hair away from the wound I put some iodine into the cut, Corporal Pyke, his assistant, helped to bind Sergeant Venner's wound with his first aid bandage. After he was fixed up he pulled out his book to finish the message, but I ordered him to clear out and go back to the dressing station. To my amazement he dissented.
"Not a bit of it, sir," he boldly replied, for the first time in his life disobeying my orders.
"Go on, sir, please, and finish the message." "I am all right."
I was so surprised that I finished the message and he stoutly refused to go to the hospital and worked on the signal wires till the battalion was permanently relieved a week or so later. I recommended him for a decoration, also a few other brave officers and men who did not get them.