Now I ask you, wasn't that rum luck? If I'd only stayed below where I belonged, I'd still be plus a finger. The ship's doctor finished up the job, but I couldn't use that hand, and, believe me, it made me sore as anything. I knew I'd miss all the sport going by having to be sent home. I tried to argue with him. But he wouldn't listen to me--home I must go. There wasn't any two ways about it--orders is orders. I traveled back on a transport. I was all right. My hand was healing fine. I wanted to stand watch on the way across, but they wouldn't let me. Treated me like a blooming invalid and gave me a month's liberty to get well. Well! I was well ten minutes after it happened. No, I didn't tell my wife how I lost it. I said I'd been mixed up in an accident in the engine room. That was pretty near the truth. You can slip so easily with the ship pitching and rearing that it isn't hard to lose an arm that way. Oh, if I was to tell her that a sub carried part of my hand away, she'd worry to death about having me go to sea again. I'll break it to her after the war. Just now there's one thing on my mind--just one--to get back somehow in the Black Gang. I can handle a shovel--my arm's a bit stiff yet, but I'm all muscle. Believe me, they aren't going to shelve me just because one finger's gone! Not by a long sight! I'm not going to miss one minute of this scrap if I can help it. My kid's going to be proud of my record before I get through--wait and see if he isn't! WARRANT CARPENTER HOYT SPEAKS: THE FLOWER OF FRANCE EVER see those red poppies that grow by the roadside in France? They always make me think of Angele. They are so graceful and vivid and gay. It almost seems as though they enjoyed watching the soldiers march past, they spring up so close to the road. All the war that has swept through the land has failed to kill the crop. You will find innumerable scarlet patches of them nodding their brave little heads to the boys as they tramp by--cheering them on--for all the world like France's daughters--bless them! I was one of the first Americans to go across after our declaration of war on Germany. Those were the days when the German propagandists in this country knew more about the movements of our fleet than we did ourselves. They called upon us formally a way off the French coast, with two torpedoes. But they were bad shots, so their visiting cards never arrived and we continued our course without any further opportunity of making their acquaintance. As we neared the coast the water became clotted up with wreckage--boxes and barrels and floating planks--yes--and bodies, too. I've never seen a sight to equal it and I have crossed eight times all told. But in the beginning of the war Fritz was pretty active. Never a day passed that we received less than seven or eight S.O.S. calls. Oh, Fritz was having it all his own way then. We've changed all that--rather!