It was an American hospital, and it sure seemed like heaven after what we had been through. They soon fixed up my leg, and then I had nothing to do but watch the nurses. They were the most efficient doctors and nurses I ever saw; everything in the hospital moved like clockwork. After a few days they set my leg and put it in splints and then I waited for my ticket to Blighty; but my troubles were not quite over. One day the German aeroplanes came over, and next night they came again and bombed our hospital. Oh, it was awful--worse than the front lines. They dropped six bombs, killed a doctor, wounded some nurses, and killed and wounded many of the boys. I lay in bed hanging onto the pillows and listened to the crash of the bombs, and the screams of the wounded. I hope I will never hear the like again. One of the bombs came through the tent I was in, but didn't explode. The minute the Huns were gone the doctors and nurses were around looking after the boys, soothing those who were shaken and attending the ones who were injured. There was no excuse for the bombing of this hospital; it was plainly marked with the Red Cross, and no one could mistake it for an ammunition dump. A few days more, and I was shipped across to dear old Blighty and three months of heaven. It was worth all I had gone through to be treated as we all were over there. I was in several hospitals, and it was the same in all--they were just as good to us as our own people could have been. The X-ray showed fifty-six pieces of tin in my leg. As the doctor remarked, "You are a regular mine, and I think we will let you take your fifty pieces back to Canada; it would destroy too many nerves to dig them out, and in time they will work up to the surface." So, here I am back in Canada, a civilian with fifty-six pieces of iron in my leg to remind me that I spent Two Years in Hell. Your chum, BOB. THE RED, RED ROAD TO HOOGE You're on parade, go get your spade, Fall in, the shovel and pick brigade, There's a carry fatigue, for half a league, And work to do with the spade. Through the dust and ruins of Ypres town The seventeen-inch still battering down, Spewing death with its fiery breath, On the red, red road to Hooge. Who is the one whose time has come, Who won't return when the work is done, Who'll leave his bones on the blood-stained stones Of the red, red road to Hooge? To the sandbagged trenches and over the top, Over the top if a packet you stop On the red, red road to Hooge. The burst and roar of the hand grenade Welcome us to the "death parade," The bit of gloom and valley of doom, The crater down at Hooge. Full many a soldier from the Rhine Must sleep tonight in a bed of lime-- 'Tis a pitiless grave for brave and knave, Is the crater down at Hooge.