“You’re a disgrace to the regiment and the Service at large,” he cried. “Fancy you threatening to run away; but I’d be after you in quick time, my man, never fear.”
“Sure, an’ you’d be welcome, your honor; but, bring yer own praties an’ things, won’t yer, colonel?”
LOVE-LETTER TO A RED CROSS NURSE
Somewhere in Europe,
Some Day in December, 1915.
My Dearest Nursie: I suppose I am the same chap who got drilled through the wing rib by a German bullet about a century since? That I haven’t been in heaven, and, not being up to sample, have been shunted to hades? Don’t mistake me, nursie. I’m jolly glad to have another go at the dog that bit me. But last time I left for the front I took my heart with me, and this time I have left it behind in old England.
I owe the Germans a grudge, but I owe them a vote of thanks, too. They introduced us, nursie. I didn’t know what living meant until I was wounded and met you. Wounded! Why, my dearest nursie, the wound you dressed so tenderly was a mere flea-bite to the one the first sight of you, a Red Cross angel, hovering about my bed, made bang through my heart.
As you know, heart wounds are generally fatal—kill a chap as dead as pork; but, as I have already said, I have found it just the other way about. My heart wound has given me new life, new hope, new courage, a new and better manhood.
I have always foolishly regarded women as the weaker sex, but great Kitchener! the Man Killers the Germans can produce and use are nothing to yours, either in range, number, or effectiveness. You take a man prisoner with one glance of your eyes, you put him hopelessly out of action with a quiver of your lip, you leave him dead to everything in earth or sky but your own sweet self with one touch of your dear hand, and you make him your eternal vassal and slave with the flicker of a smile.
Melinite is a fool to the galvanic thrill the mere sound of your fairy footstep approaching my bed or my chair used to give me every morning. The German “Black Marias” are mere popguns to the batteries of your sweet eyes, masked at times by their fringed lashes. The German bayonets even at their best cannot begin to compete with the wounds your gentle tongue can inflict by a sharp rebuke, and a charge of Uhlans is nothing to the overwhelming charge of love which sweeps through the ranks of my heart when I think of you.