“More still upon the drama of his last experiences—from the moment when he burst into Aldwych his first day in uniform, so big, so startlingly handsome—above all, so gay—a shout of ‘stepmother!’ that raised the dust in that crowded, smoky refuge where the hundreds of tired Belgians looked around in astonishment that anyone left in the world could be so fresh, so dazzling—through those months of his watch beside his guns or directing fire from his exposed shell-swept hillside—that awful moment when the enemy found the range and poured death down upon the shelter that was no shelter—when all the other officers within call took refuge there, fourteen in all, Harry, the youngest, but the one who dashed out under fire to carry what was left of one of his telephonists to the first-aid station—a poor mangled mass of humanity, still breathing and crying out, a deed that in a smaller war would have meant the Victoria Cross, but in this, only one of a thousand such daily—after it his sudden collapse from the shock—(‘No one knew it, stepmother! I managed to bluff it through!’) But his colonel had been through the same experience and backed the doctor up in sending him to the base for a few days. “Then his June leave, luckily due anyway, brought him over to No. 7 where he could be petted and taken care of—but it was a quiet Harry—no less clear-eyed and vigorous, but so, _so_ tired. “Then Winston Churchill and Garvin trying to make him take three weeks’ extra leave, the boy’s refusal, his return to France, some weeks in the ammunition column, where, knowing him to be comparatively safe, I could carry an easier heart, then a hasty line: ‘Just going up to one of the batteries to replace a casualty. It’s too bad it comes while I’m in bad shape, but it can’t be helped, and it surely is what I’m here for, after all. Don’t worry any more than you can help.’ “That was August 22, only short notes after that, though he could find time to write, ‘I’m going to try to get over to Gerard’s grave. If I can find some flowers I’ll decorate it for you.’ “His friend, Captain Zamora, to whom he’d given my address, could not have been with him at the last, for he had also had shell-shock and was with the ammunition column, but he wrote on the 1st of September that Harry had been with his guns the night before, when the call came, had gone in apparently the best of spirits—and the same shell killed him and his battery commander. “It has been so beautiful this week. I’ve never seen a harvest-moon more wonderful. One can only think what a world it is—and Harry and Gerard both out of it.” GUTHRIE OF THE “KILTIES” The First Canadian to Enlist Came Back with Scars of Twenty-two Wounds