WHAT IS LUCK

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 14 September 1917, Page 4

WHAT IS LUCK

A LANCE-CORPORAL'S OPINION. " Luck." said the Scots lance-corporal -with his arm in a sling and the D.C.M. ribbon . on bis tunic, "is what- you aye wish someone else anil hope lo get- yourself. It is founded upon superstition, and the so-called mascot is just a heathen fetish. I -will give you my own experience of 'the_ matter, and just let yoii draw your own inferences' from it. " Ou the day that war was declared I wa« in Edinburgh, my native town, and I walked up the Mound and enlisted in my old regiment, Pontius Piluto'j Bodyguard. To be precise, I had been a territorial in the regiment, the olil First Foot, now known as the Royal Scots. '"One Saturday afternoon, after our period of training, we left the divisional camp for a destination unknown. Of the several trains that van south from Scotland that night one was smashed up near Gretna, on the border. I was hi the train immediately preceding the eollison, and—that was my j first- escape. " We embarked on a transport for tho Mediterranean, and duly landed hi Egypt. Two days there and we were ordered to Gallipoli. On the trawler we were packed as'close as a eran of hearing, and ill that condition, in the dead of niiht, we were run dewn by a big French steamer and cut to the water line. It so happened that I could parly-voo a bit, and. by dint of hard shouting across to their captain, he came alongside us again, and we were taken oft' without a single casualty except the ship's? cat. which. I am told, went down with the trawler. That, you may ssv, was escape number two. •' At Gallipoli I was over the parapet in a charge through which most of my friends never came, but- all t'ua Johnny Turk had for me was a clean bullet hole just bc-l .w the knee. That brought my' escapes up to three. "You may think, maybe," said he, in a kind of an aside. " that the doctrine of predestination accounts for all tLat. They say." he added. '• that a cat has nine lives, hut a brick and a yard of string is enough to alter his predestination. "Anyhow, to cut-a long story short. I was shortly afterwards invalided home with dysentery. After some mouths in a ;Scottisli hospital I rejoined the regiment in France. I was over the top twice and into Marfcinpuicb and all, without a scratch. I began to think the bullet wasn't yet made that was to get me, and then I took trench fever, and so back to Blighty again." The philosopher drew to a close. " So you may say," said he, impressively, "that I . have in all had five chances at least of death, got through them all with nothing more to show for it than a wee hit hole in the knee." As he concluded he felt for his pipe, and at that precise moment we all became conscious that Ids arm was 111 a bandage and

j-pliutri—ii fact lie had apparently overlooked. It. was Billjim who voiced our thoughts: '• What's about your arm, Jock?" "Oh, that:'' said the lance-corporal lightly, t broke ifc a week ago jumping off a motor bus. A sheer bit of bad luck!"