GUNNER AND GRENADIER
A LITTLE BIT OP HERO-WORSHIP. Nicholson ivas the man's name—Bombardier Nicholson, of the Royal Field Artillery—and the quality of, his service' was attested by the cluster of medals that hung upon his tunic on parade days. . Indeed, his army record alone ought to have given a sharp edge to his interest in life, but to those who watched by his hospital bed he seemed to care nothing at all about life and quite as little about death. On the frontier hills of India, by the sullen rivers of China, on the burning sands of Egypt, and the long leagues of African veld 1 lie had proved himself all that a British gunner ought to be, and now on ,the plains of Flanders he had fallen, and over his maimed body the doctors shook their heads. -Though: years might still be granted to hiin, never again would the bugle summon him to battle. About his comrades in suffering also he showed l no concern, never even asked the name of one of or anything about their battles,, or the wounds whereby they had been beaten. But after the lapse of several weeks there came to the hospital a certain Private Thomas Brown, who was wheeled into Nicholson's ward and laid in the bed nest to him, and when he picked up some wisps of doctor's talk that drifted across the alley his eyes grow big and bright, and he beckoned the nurse to his side. "Say, nurse," he whispered, "that bloke over there. Know anything about him? What's his regiment?" "His regiment," the nurse repeated. "I'm afraid I don't—oh, yes, I remember. I fancy I heard the doctor say that he was one of the Guards—the Grenadier Guards." "Ah I the Grenadier Guards. I'd —I'd do anything for one of the Grenadier Guards." To the nurse the explanation was barren of all illuminating power. "I don't understand," she protested. "Why the Grenadiers more than any other regiment?" Bombardier Nicholson, drew himself up stiffly as though on parade. "I beg your pardon, nurse," he said, his words and bearing as full of dignity as he could make them. "I thought you'd have known. I thought everybody knew. It's a thing gunners never for? get. When we've had the Grenadier Guards in front of us we've never lost a ejmi;" ..
—O.W, in the "Manchester Guardian."
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Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2687, 5 February 1916, Page 13
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395GUNNER AND GRENADIER Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2687, 5 February 1916, Page 13
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