Some one might treat her rough."
"Captain," said Bok, hailing the officer, "you can attend to that, can't
you, when the time comes?"
"I sure can, and I sure will," answered the Captain. And with a quick
salute, Pinney and his porker went off across the road!
Bok was standing talking to the commandant of one of the great French
army supply depots one morning. He was a man of forty; a colonel in the
regular French army. An erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and
mustache, and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve,
came up, saluted, delivered a message, and then asked:
"Are there any more orders, sir?"
"No," was the reply.
He brought his heels together with a click, saluted again, and went
away.
The commandant turned to Bok with a peculiar smile on his face and
asked:
"Do you know who that man is?"
"No," was the reply.
"That is my father," was the answer.
The father was then exactly seventy-two years old. He was a retired
business man when the war broke out. After two years of the heroic
struggle he decided that he couldn't keep out of it. He was too old to
fight, but after long insistence he secured a commission. By one of the
many curious coincidences of the war he was assigned to serve under his
own son.
When under the most trying conditions, the Americans never lost their
sense of fun. On the staff of a prison hospital in Germany, where a
number of captured American soldiers were being treated, a German
sergeant became quite friendly with the prisoners under his care.
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