PRIVATE O'REILLY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 68, 20 July 1915, Page 6

PRIVATE O'REILLY.

A STORY OF TRENCH LIFE. I have spent part of two days in what is left of Belgium (writes Mr William G. Shepherd, the correspondent of the American Pnited Press), and I find that the dream of the Belgians is to see the King ride hack into Brussels. ilea hnd women, hoys and girls, merchants and tanners, talk and plan and hkvo visions of the time when the “Ring comes home.”

Across the road from Mme. T)~—’s. little cross-roads country store is a farmhouse. 1 went over there for a glass of milk. Four children crowded round the Belgian farm woman as she talked to me. “I take care" of the farm myself.”, she said. “Jhe children help me,; hut they are very little, sir they not I* they like better to take care of Mr O’Reilly’s grave out in the yard., Thev farm the flowers on it.”

“May I see Mr O’Reilly’s grave?” .[ asked.

“But certainly, Monsieur. Como Avjth jiie.” . ,

We trooped through the little house of the back door, and there, in tlie midst of the black ploughed land .was a huge mound of yellow wood-flow-

ers. “Private Patrick O’Reilly, Dublin Fusiliers, Killer! in Action,” read the lettering on the white wooden cross. “The children loved him,” said the woman.

“Qh, did they know him?”

“Know him! Did be not use to live in this house with us? Did he not bring the children oranges from the town, and candy ? Was he not always playing and laughing and making funny sounds like he thought were French words? To hear him talk through his nose, like lie said Frenchmen did! How the children used to laugh! And f, too. We were never afraid of the shells and the bullets in our house when he was there. Only half a mile over there, behind the hill, are the English trenches, and Mr O’Reilly used to have to go there very often. He always used to let thp children pull on his big woollen mittens for him before lie started outfor the trenches. Then he would give them all one spank apiece and we would-all laugh, and then lie would start out, and wo would lie id pur beds and think of him out there in the cold and wet on the other side of the hill where the bullets can bit you? But one- morning, when the soldiers came back from the fryiit of the hill along tlie road that passes in front of our house. Mr O’Reilly was not with them. Pretty soon other meii came from the trenches' and they were wirrying men on stretchers. “‘Where is Mr O’Reilly,’ 1 asked them . “'“He is on that stretcher,’ said a soldier. “ ‘Bring him into his home.’ 1 said. f started to run into the house for some cognac, which is very good when a man is weak, but they stopped me, and a soldier said, ‘No use. Mr O’Reilly is dead.’ “They were going to bury him somewhere nearby, and 1 asked them to make his grave in our yard. Aml so there it is. We will always take care of i( ”