Stretcher Bearers at the Double - ElectricCanadian.com

"SUNNY FRANCE 95
From inside the house came sounds of revelry. Music, laughter
and the shuffling of dancing feet could be heard through the
partly-opened windows. Their knocks on the house door were
finally answered. Out came Yvonne, the girl who had taken
Mike s particular fancy, followed by a grinning crowd of French
friends. Holding her hand was a stalwart French corporal whom
she introduced as her husband! He had come home on leave the
day before and they had just that morning been married. It was a
wedding celebration that the arrival of our two Don Juans had
interrupted.
The girl s mother brought the two dazed lads some wine with
which to toast the newlyweds, but Mike and Ben were too
chagrined to do the toast justice. After stammered adieus they
meandered back down the hill with a new understanding of
"Love s Labor Lost" and a very strong suspicion that all women
were fickle.
If Mike was unlucky in love, there were many of the lads who
were more fortunate. John McRae and Bert Pearson were the
worst (or best!) heart-breakers. Redheaded Gabrielle, Martha,
-
Rachel
-
and Zenobie were wonderful girls all of them. And
the girls in the white house on the Steenvoorde road weren t hard
to look at, either ! Our boys had a lot of good clean fun and the
mamselles received a lot of attention.
Long Jawn and Little Pick.<^
Piccadilly Bridges, because of his well-known French accent,
was official "interrupter"
for the boys. Corporal McRae used him
as an intermediary when he went courting Gabrielle. If Pick
pressed McRae s suit he did not neglect to press his own, and it
was rather laughable to see and hear the giant corporal and the
diminutive ex-signaller making their bids for the fluttering heart
of the gentle Gaby. And, to make the thing funnier - - whenever
Pick and Mac weren t with the girl, another B. Section heartbreaker
was on the job, and succeeded in starting in where they
left off.
It was in this town that Doug. Cascaden was rather badly
burned in a cookhouse accident. When the medical officer asked
Cass the usual question,
"Where were you born, etc.," Doug.,
regardless of his terrible suffering, didn t forget his Irish origin.