GETTING THE NEWS.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3790, 4 July 1917, Page 3

GETTING THE NEWS.

A HOSPITAL SCENE.

(By "A Corporal," in the Da\ly Mail). After breakfast the walking cases go down to the hospital gate to wait for the newspaper boy. There is always a crowd —a crowd of men broken in the war; passive but eager partners in the Great Push which is bein,g carried on by their "pals." It is wrong to say that wounded soldiers wish to forget the war. See this crowd ; see the cot cases away t^ere in the wards eagerly waiting for the latest news. Listen to the conversation of these Blues and Greys by the gate. It is a soul-stirring array of crutches and sticks and bandages, and empty sleeves and trousers, a parade to twist one's heart-strings; but mostly the men are as merry as lads fresh out of school. For the newspapers are coming. Here they are. The boy with the bundle is very.;soon sold out. The men call him "Sonny" and pat his head, and off he goes with a wellfilled pocket andran experience which I hope he will describe to children of a generation yet unborn. "We've fixed 'em," a Cockney Tommy says, smiling. As he. reads, he rests on his crutches against the wall. "We got 'em on the run." "Yes, an' you'll be on the run, my lad, if you come down in yer slipper again," observes an R.A.M.C. sergeant. "Put yer boot on, I tbld ya. Ye mall be blamin' me if ya catch cold." But there is a kindly twinkle in the sergeant's eye, and he walks over to the wounded boy and inquires, "'Ow now?" "Fine,," the lad replies. "We got 'em all right." I mean yer foot." "Oh, all right, . . . 'Ere, read this. „ .. . 'Aig ain't 'alf giving 'em something." Close by a lad of atfout nineteen is looking for his brother through a reading-glass, which he holds against a group photograph of fighting men in an illustrated daily. "Taint Joe," he says dolefully. "Shure?" a chum puts in cheerfully. '"Aye a good look. P'haps 'c ain't 'ad a shave or somethin'." Another close scrutiny. A shake of the head. , "Think I'll stop looking," he mutters. "IJon't do no 'arm to look," says the |hum. "Wants a stronger glass,, p'raps. Ain't all gone west wot's missin', mind." The men hop, hobble, and walk away, reading the war stories as ■tfhey go. The names of the places are grimly familiar. Tre fellows smile. "That's where I got my packet," says a broken giant of a man. His foot is missing. "Aye," a north-country Tommy remarks, "there were one or two packets 'anded out round about that plaace." He hobbles forward with his stick and his newspaper, and his memories. "Aye,, there were and all. Seme good lads, too." The straggling, slow-moving procession winds its way to the wards, ' where the men in the beds are waiting. "Wot's the news ?" a dozen voices call. "Fritz is flopped," a becrutched soldier cries. "They're dosing the Kaiser with Number Nines and he's arskin' for peace. . . . 'Ere y're, Tom," banding a paper to a boy sitting in»a wheeled chair. "Mark yer map." The boy wheels his chair to a ward table and lays out the newspaper and a map. For a little while he quietly studies the operations. Then he marks his map and looks up smiling. "A bit nearer Berlin, boys," he says. And while the nuzse dresses the place where they took off his shattered! leg, the map is shown proudly round the ward.