An English artilleryman, who before the war was a professional footballer in the North of England, died in hospital. He had previously undergone amputation of both legs. Up to the end he chatted with two visitors who had come to solace his last moments. The dying man, who in his time had been a great centre forward, told them he did not fancy living with his two legs off while all the other "boys" were out playing, but declared he would not have missed the excitement of the last battle for anything. Refusing grapes and chocolate, he took a cigarette and said: "Have you any newspapers with you? I should like to glance over the football news before I pass out." There is an irrepressible Welsh Fusilier at the Stanley Hospital, Liverpool, who is known as "the Joker of the Regiment." He has three bad bullet wounds, and yet he is as cheerful as a lion comique, and keeps his fellows as cheerful as children at a circus. After telling his mother in a letter that he was "in dock for repairs," a soldier continued: "This leaves me with a smile on my face, only I'll say good-bye, lest we should never meet again." Rifleman P. King, 2nd Battalion King's Royal Rifles, wrote from Portsmouth Hospital: "Since I have been home I have had a leg amputated 4 inches below the knee, so now one tin of blacking will last twice as long, as I shall only have one boot to clean!" So it is that the brave spirit of our soldiers enables them to joke even at serious wounds. A hand of a Royal Irish Rifleman was shot off at the battle of Mons. For some time after being admitted to hospital he was very despondent about his future. How could he earn his living? One day, however, he broke out with a laugh. "If all else fails. I'll get a job as a shorthand writer." Another Highlander, with arm terribly shattered by a shell, said: "I will be first-rate for opening taxi doors in the Strand; lucky it was my left arm." A soldier told a reporter this about a wounded Highlander. When brought to hospital he began to swear, and those who had picked him up at great risk told him that this was a strange sort of gratitude to men who had most likely saved his life. "Maybe you have, and maybe you haven't saved my life," he said in his dogged, dour way. "A'm no saying onnything aboot that; but what A want to hear is what did ye dae wi' me wee cap. It's loast, it is, an' A'll hae tee pay for anither oot o' me ain pocket."