Bobby looked at me in surprise. "You're a great claque for me," he said.
"You seem to take an interest in my hero. Yes, he got it. He was badly
hurt. One hand nearly gone and a wound in his side. I was lucky enough
to be in London on a day three months later, and to be present at the
ceremony, when the young French-Canadian, spoiled for a soldier, but
splendid stuff now for a hero, stood out in the open before the troops
in front of Buckingham Palace and King George pinned the V.C. on his
breast. They say that he's back in his village, and the whole show. I
hear that he tells over and over the story of his heroism and the rescue
of '_Mon Lieutenant_.' to never failing audiences. Of course, John is
looking after him, for the hand which John saved was the hand that was
shot to pieces in saving John, and the Tin Lizzie can never make his
living with that hand again. A deserter, a coward--decorated by the King
with the Victoria Cross! Queer things happen in war!" There was a stir,
a murmur as of voices, of questions beginning, but Bobby was not quite
through.
"War takes the best of the best men, and the best of the cheapest, and
transfigures both. War doesn't need heroes for heroism. She pins it on
anywhere if there's one spot of greatness in a character. War does
strange things with humanity," said Bobby.
And I, gasping, broke out crudely in three words: "Our Tin Lizzie!" I
said, and nobody knew in the least what I meant, or with what memories I
said it.
HE THAT LOSETH HIS LIFE SHALL FIND IT
The Red Cross women had gone home. Half an hour before, the large
library had been filled with white-clad, white-veiled figures. Two long
tables full, forty of them today, had been working; three thousand
surgical dressings had been cut and folded and put away in large boxes
on shelves behind glass doors where the most valuable books had held
their stately existence for years. The books were stowed now in trunks
in the attic. These were war days; luxuries such as first editions must
wait their time. The great living-room itself, the center of home for
this family since the two boys were born and ever this family had been,
the dear big room with its dark carved oak, and tapestries, and stained
glass, and books, and memories was given over now to war relief work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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