The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1918-04-21
" dolly pALRYMPLE


q EoT wp ~ shrapnal, IS pieces OF
- the deadly. dull-looking, life
taking metal piercing his slender
body; existing with the Fifth Cana
dian field artillery in November, 1914,
and engaged at the battle of Ypres
and all engagements on the Ypres
front in the summer and the fall of
1915; wounded on October IS. 1915
CHS birthday, by the way), and in
valided to England; three months in
the hospital and returned to France
and assigned to the personal staff OF
Gen. Sir Julian Byng, commander OF
the Canadian army corps; through the
battles of the Somme and Arras;
wounded again on February "a. 1911,
at Arras front and invalided to
"Blighty;" spending sometime at the
Edinburgh war hospital, Bangour,
Scotland, and thence to the King 8
Canadian Red Cross hospital, Bushy
Park, London, and later to the Ontario
military hospital, Orpington, thence
back to Canada and later to the
Bellevue hospital. New York. where
he was operated on January "a, 1918,
and now on convalescent leave for
two months and working in the in
terest of the government through the
great picture America at War-Over
Here-and Over There" These are
only a few of the many exciting ex-
periences and hair breadth escapes
from death, which Sergt. L. Shannon
Cormack has passed since England de-
clared war against Germany.
I - II l. l.
a heart of steel and a body of chain
mail, nervous, high strung, and tense,
who has lived through the fortunes of
the damned, his very soul barred to the
bullets of the Huns and his body in
hourly danger of absolute dissolution
is character to be reckoned with and
his recital of the life that the men
lead in the trenches gong 'over the
top in "No Mans Land" is greater
literature than was ever penned
1t is hard to transscribe person
atty like Sergeant Cormack's to plain
pen and paper; it's his spirit" the
dead-game spirit of the boy that counts
so much, that permeates every gesture
and word, that strikes so close to the
heart as he tells of how before the
war he didn't know pick or shovel
from Lewis gun, and had earned his
living as a newspaper reporter, and
how practically all during his entire
life the hours he had spent in manual
labor could be counted on the fingers
of one hand and yet when this dread
full war began he and his bunkmate,
a fellow named Dodd-coming up from
the Somme after several months of
gruelling, set out to get home in a
comparatively quiet sector and find
ing a disused pig sty (the former ten
ants of which had been Germans and
Austrians) converted it into livable
habitation, building and creating 1T
with their own hands out of bit of
lumber and chicken wire and by a
slight stretch of the imagination one
could believe that all the comforts OF
home" existed there. Just year be-
fore Sergeant Cormack had been IN
comfortable quarters in luxurious New
York with a nice, fat job with the
Brooklyn Eagle.
And the most astounding part OF 1t
all is that this frail looking blonde
boy with heart of steel and body
of chain mail, is going back to No
Mans Land for more. Like the little
boy with the cake, that's his daily
cry-"more!"
You'd think the very heart and soul
would have been taken out of him
with what he has suffered and seen
and knew; but not so--he's going back
"oyer there" to finish the Huns and
finish them up good and proprietor
YOU know, as 1 do, that the Huns hate