STRAY TEETH.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 147, 18 February 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

STRAY TEETH.

j " What struck me most at the front, eh?" repeated a wounded soldi'!*, in reply to a visitor's question. " VVJI, ' you're giv : ng me a first-class chaiicc of making a joke, you know." There ( are such things as bullets about." He : tapped hi j wounded arm, meaningly. "It's hard to say, really, but perhaps tlie thing that seems most strange is the fact that in the most serious moments and in situations that are really perilous something funny seems bound to crop up. I'll give you an instance: | "There s a fellow m my company named Potts, called Pewter, for obvious reasons. Now Pewter possesses a set of features that would for ever bar i the way to his becoming a matinee idol, but somehow or another he's possessed of the idea that he's as handIsome as they make 'em. " 'I don't care where I get it so long as I don't get a clump on the head, , Pewter said to me when we were start- ' ing the little Loos go. '1 dlke to take ' a decent face home with me. I would, i really.' He'd no sooner got the words j out than a chunk of shrapnel shell caught him on the jaw. I "1 turned round to sec Pewter on all j fours. 'Hurt, mate?' 1 askei him. I " 'Nothing to speak of.' he answer- ' ed. 'You get on with it: never mind mo -' > . ■ I "Tlie poor fellow was clutching , lumps of earth ;ind clay and groping - about a-; a man iwill do when he s got it badly. 'lf you aren't hurt. Pewter,' • T sa'd, 'what are you doing down there?' , j " 'Looking for my teeth. T am, | snapped out Master I'otts. I got em ' from a Birkenhead dentist on the cn--v system, and I've only paid seven instalments up to now. You see they don't exactly belong to me till I vo finished paving. I'm not courting trouble, coekv; that Birkenhead chap is a beggar for the law! At Nanev some soldiers digging a trench in the Forest of Champcnoux unearthed gold and silver coins of th" j early seventeenth century of consider, j able antiquarian value.