Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1919 — FIGHT BATTLES OVER AND OVER [ARTICLE]

FIGHT BATTLES OVER AND OVER

pital Have to Be ; Amused. ARE LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN Mnw Their Job Is Done -They. Will Fight to a Finish With Best Friends Over Question of Who Won War. London. —Three wounded boys who ere left behind in the hospital, the ones whose names were crossed from the lists of those who sailed away in time to reach home forUhristmas. are the especial charge of the women who, volunteered to work on the care committee of tbe Red Cross . way back yonder last summer when there was a w on. --—■■ ' —■ — : We thought that with the signing of the armistice our work soon would be over and the Christmas plans we already had begun to make were abandoned under the impression that there wouldn’t be any wounded to entertain in England. But that was all a mistake ; it seems as if our work might go on for quite a bit yet. Anyhow, our hospital at Tottenham is one of those which is still full. Every afternoon trains of ambulances pour out their burdens in pur receivingward s j ust as in war times, and boys who have been for months in French or British hospitals are for the first time among' their own home folks. Wounded Captives Received. Then there are our wounded prisoners—now beginning to dribble back from Germany—to be looked after and made much of. To listen to their < stories alone takes one person’s entire time. There was no bother about Christmas dinner at Tottenham. Uncle Sam saw to that ages ago. Every boy in the hospital here had such a Christmas dinner as he will remember for years. Sir Thomas Lipton gave a party, one of his many, and it had special Christmas frills. The boys who could be moved assert they had a bully time at Sir Thomas’ house. He understands American boys, and more, he gets people to help entertain who understand them, too, like theta and don’t contradict them when they declare that they won the war. It’s all a matter of that little phrase with them. These children of a larger growth who have been masquerading in Jthaki- these last few months Jia ve become children again; now their job is done and they will fight to the finish with their best friends over the question of who won the war. They just naturally can’t keep off it. And some of the ones who arrived too late to fight at all declare that it’s not won yet, and that wars and wars and wars are going to follow. By night time they are all worn out with fighting it all over again and they sink back in their narrow little gray cots and the indulgent nurses —girls of our Denver unit in their quiet gray cotton dresses-arid their snowy caps—pass down the long wards tucking In this quivering battler, smoothing the forehead of that boy of nineteen who has lost all his faith in any government whatsoever because he lost his> hospital allowance to a guv from Cincinnati before he had bad time to even pack it in the cherished money belt the Red Cross gave him. But most of the boys who are being left over here are seriously wounded and it is thought best Tor them not to take a sea voyage for a while longer; so we try to plan little surprises for

them weej< by week to the time until their joyful summons comes. It isn’t so easy, either, to think Of something that will amuse a lad who must always lie on his chest to keep a piece of shrapnel lodged somewhere in his interior from floating Jnto a locality where it may cause a great deal of damage. Bracelets Are Praised. Little stiver bracelets with ta gs bearing-the boy’s full name and his military number are perhaps the most coveted trinkets, .but as these cost $1.50 apiece. they cannot be got by the dozen by a single person. And thOh by the time they were all engraved anti the numbers verified in all probability the boys would be -transferred -and far away. 1 asked one boy Juror ftAvas~tfiat Yanks were crazy to wear bracelets, and he said it was a little queer how the idea had taken, and then he. addcil: “What can you expect? We took to wrist watches because they told us Tlghting men wore them: we found they wouldn’t go, but we got the habit of having something on our arms, and it all came down to this: if you’ve got your stuff chained to you it’s yours; just once pry it oft and you pass on and leave it. just like we have left so many things we thought sure we couldn’t get along without.”