For bringing fifty-nine men out of action when all the officers and non-commissioned officers were killed or wounded, T. Burns, of the Middlesex Regiment, was made a King's Corporal. At the battle of Mons a bit of shell hit him between his eyes and he got a bullet through a thigh and one through a wrist. Even this was not enough of it. "I am going out again as soon as I am well. I am itching for sweet revenge, or another coconut shie. 'All you knock down you have.' What a game!" _The Morning Post_ correspondent wrote: "I saw a colonel yesterday who has been invalided three times. He had seven bullet wounds, and had lost two toes by a shell. The last time he was wounded, though he lay exposed to a murderous fire, he ordered away all rash attempts of his men to succour him. When his last wounds were healed in an hospital in the South of France he was so anxious to return to duty at the front that the only leave he asked for was twenty-four hours in Paris to visit his wife. Not that the front is exactly pleasant, but because being away from it is just impossible." A newspaper correspondent lately wrote that he saw a train full of officers and soldiers leaving London to go back after a few days' leave to their "funk holes" at the front. "They were," he wrote, "as cheerful as boys off to the seaside for a holiday." Probably, however, some of our soldiers are not now as ready to return to the war as they were when they knew less about it. They have no desire again to "wade knee deep through blood." A wounded man who returned lately to England said when he found himself in a comfortable hospital bed, "I could do with a rest here until they send for me to make me Kaiser." One of the Coldstream Guards, who had been invalided home, was asked if he was keen to return. He replied, "No, I am not a liar or a lunatic, and only a liar or a madman would say that he was anxious to return to hell. Still, I'll go if they want me with a good heart." When a man has done his "bit" in the war he is sometimes unselfish enough to wish to give some one else a chance. Once bitten twice shy; turn about is fair play. "Send out the Army and Navy, Send out the rank and file, (Have a banana!) Send out the brave Territorials, They easily can run a mile. (I don't think!) Send out the boys' and the girls' brigade, They will keep old England free: Send out my mother, my sister, and my brother, But for goodness' sake don't send me." Many soldiers who had retired from the Army were ready to return to it. It does them credit that they should in this way desire to help their country. One of these heroic volunteers is Piper Findlater. It will be remembered that he gained the V.C. at Dargai in October, 1897, when he continued playing "The Cock o' the North" after being wounded. CHAPTER XXIII Fashions at the Front