Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-10-05
Story Told of How an Ameri-
can College Boy Had a
''BuIly Summer"
LOOp-STAINED RELICS
TO DECORATE HIS ROOM
Fresh From Theater of Strife He
Returns to the School Where
He Was Gated
BY HERBERT COREY.
Copyright, 1881

PARIS, September 2.-The boy sails
for home on the steamer that carries
this letter. Every one seems to be
glad of it, Every one likes the boy,
but he skates too persistently on thin
fee. He is planning to decorate his
room at college with the blood-spotted
souvenirs he got at the front in
Flanders He was gated at college
last year, but he thinks he will be
given another chance. No one but the
boy would have those souvenirs in a
bedroom. They hold too sour an odor
of death.
This cap. now said the boy. proud
ly Amt it a pip. though? The bullet
went right through his forehead, ana
there's blood all over 1t.
That cap carries intimate memories
10 the boy The man who once wore
the cap rode up with the boy on his
ambulance. The boy, you see, mas Deen
q volunteer ambulance driver. he hked
the man who wore the cap. he hao
some good stories of his adventures as
a soldier, and traded the boy buttons
he had cut from dead Germans In re-
turn for cigarettes, and helped the BOY
change tire. This is nervous 1ob on
q road that may be shelled any min ,c
When they reached the ambulance base
they shook hands when they said good
bye The boy waited for orders
ut wasn't ten minutes before they
brought this guy back to me, sara
the boy, and told me to beat 1t for
the hospital But he died on the way
80 l pinched his cap. Associations ana
all that sort of thing, don't you Know
He put that blood-wet cap under his
Jacket in order to escape detection
The boy has no nerves that any one
has been able to find. He has no SEN
sibilities, either. and but rudimentary
conscience. He came over here frankly
in search of adventure, in precisely the
spirit that he might drive car IN
race or go to the theater. He has been
blind as Digger Indian to the great
est tragedy the world has ever seem
The war to him has been big game
hunt. The thing he is moso proud OF
are the photographs he secured. They
are better even than the snapshots of
moose he got last winter in Canada.
You had to be careful" he ex-
planned. They raise the dickens when
they catch you with camera
Some of His Photographs.
Not the men. of course. If the men
were not too busy they were always
good -naturedly willing to pose. 1t was
the officers who interfered. One officer
ordered him not to use his camera, but
consented to go out of sight around a
graphed group of mangled corpses.
Thus he could swear he had no knowl-
edge of the boys transgression. Some
times a belated discretion came to the
young man.
There were six men sitting around
In a circle once" said he, kind of
souatting on their hunkers. you know,
and looking at bomb. when it went
of. 1t blew the front parts of all
their heads off and didn't touch the
rest of them. Just their faces were
gone
He wanted to photograph the six
when he came with his ambulance to
take the bodies away, but thought
better of it, The other soldiers were
pretty badly cut up. he explained. and
he feared they might break his cam
era.
II ne has no sense of proportion,
neither has he any fear He isn't more
than twenty years old. this youngster,
and yet he has risked his life care