WHAT IS LUCK?

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 6 September 1917, Page 3

WHAT IS LUCK?

A LANCE-COBPOBAL ’S OPINION. “Luck,” said the Scots lance-cor-poral with his arm in a sling and the D.C.M. ribbon on his tunic, “is what you mav ■wish-someone else and hope to get jyour,self. It Jis ! fouiujjed 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 you draw your own inferences from it. “On the day that wan was declared. I was in Edinburgh, my native town, and I walked up the Mound and enlisted in my old regiment, Pontius Pilate ’s Bodyguard, To be precise, I had been a territorial in the regiment, old First Foot, now’ -known as the Koyal Scots.

“One Saturday afternoon, after our period of training w r e left divisional camp for a destination unknown. Of the several trains that ran south from Scotland that night, one was smashed up near Gretna, on the border I was in th.e train immediately preceding the collision and —that was my first escape. “We embarked on a transport for ths Mediterranean and duly landed in Egypt. Two days there and we w\cre ordered to Gallipoli. On the trawler we w'ere packed as close as a herring, and in that condition, in the dead of night, we wmre run down 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 off without a single casualty (except the ship's cat w’hich, I am told, went down with the trawder. That, you may say, was escape number tw r o.

l : "At Gallipoli, I was over the parapet in a charge through which most of my friends never came, but all that Johnny Turk had for me was a clean bullet hole just below 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 that,” “They say, he added, "that a cat has nine lives, but a brick and a yard of string is enough to alter his predestination. "Anyhow, to cut a story short, I was, shortly afterwards, invalided home with dysentry. After some months in a Scottish hospital I rejoined the regiment in France, I was over the top twice and in Martinpunch and all, without a scratch. I began to think the bullet -wasn’t yet made that was to get me, and when 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, and got through them all with nothing more to show for. it all than a wee bit hole in the knee.”

As he concluded he felt for his pipe, and at that precise moment, for we all became conscious that his arm was in a bandage and splints—a fact he had apparently overlooked. It -was Billjim who voiced our thoughts: "What’s about your arm, Jock?” "Oh! that,” said the lance-corporal lightly, " I broke it a week ago jumpping off a motor-bus. A sheer bit of bad luck!”