The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-03-19
By DOLLY DALRYMPLE


 1 AA home soidiersl Come and join sA a the big drive for the "Camou- 1 flage Carnival" Easter Monday for the Tobacco Fund for the Fighting Fourth lover there.p
 What's a '.camouflage carnival" you ask? Now, that would be telling, and it just happens, anyway, that it's one of those things that you must so and see for yourself in order to find out just exactly what 1t is. Search me; don't know, Only this do know, and that is that Mrs. Louise Woodward Ball, the pretty, attractive chairman for the carnival, and all the nice women who are helping her are just as busy as they can be pulling off this big tea party
 Later on I'm going to try my level best to find out for you what the "camoufIage Carnival is all about, but just at this present moment want to tell you what it's for and how every single. solitary penny which is made by lit will be used.
 Our boys--our dear, good friends many of them close, personal friends are somewhere in France" today with "the old Fighting Fourth"-the 167th regiment; some of these brave boys have been decorated for bravery in the fright full battles they have already been in; what they may do before all the dread ful war is over?
 One thing we do know, and we are told by the soldiers who have been lover there" and that is that the men long for their smoke" "-long and long because tobacco is so expensive and so difficult to get that they are deprived O. # and it is left to the "stay-at-homes' to see that they are provided with it.
 Nobody has told the story of how Uncle Sarn's boys who are fighting in France today need "smokes" better, or half as well, as Arthur Guy Empey, the famous author of lover the Top,'' in his second book of the war, entitled First Call"
 I hope when he lectures here next Friday evening that this splendid young soldier man will tell you himself some- thing of the necessity of smokes for our boys-because he knows-vhe's been tbere--hes heard the men begging and crying and wailing for smokes"
 Listen to what he says in his chapter
 
 T had been slightly wounded in an attack on the German lines and had been sent to the base hospital at Rouen. The bed next to mine was empty. The sheets were turned down, the pillow was missing and a rubber sheet was stretched across the center of the bed, the eEda of which were neatly tucked under the mattress. It was my first time in hospital, but even to me, reopi1it ba Lo hod cialiy prepared and was waiting for some special case. l was right--it was.
 'ln the bed on my left was a Jock-a Scottie-from the Fifteenth Royal Scots, o. R., Ladies He'll as this particular Highland regiment was lovingly called by Fritz. I asked him why the bed was made up in such a peculiar manner. He told me that the occupant was up in the pictures (operating theater), having both his hands amputated at the wrists, and also that the Canadian had been blinded by an exploding bomb. In about a half an hour four white-clothed order lies came down the ward, carrying a Stretcher. In the wake of the stretcher came a Red Cross nurse. The wounded man was transferred very tenderly from the stretcher to the bed. Tn a short time the ether began to die out and the frothy lips twitched, and then sigh, and the man began to sing-not God Save the King or The Maple Leaf Forever but Never Introduce a Bloke to Your Lady Friend Pretty soon the tune changed to a shout of ammo Ammunition, ammo forward You could hear him all over the ward. The nurse began to sing a grooming little lullaby, and in a few minutes rays of consciousness pene- trated the brain of the wounded man. and he started to mutter:
 Turn on the lights; it's dark; it's dark; I can't see: it's dark; it's dark. Take that damned pillow off my head It's dark; it's dark, I tell you. Whats the matter with my mitts? They're tied --cobblestones on them. Where am I? Smokey. this dugout's dark! Switch on the glim!'
 Tt was not long before the blinded soldier fell asleep; he sept for three hours, and not for second did the nurse leave her post I inwardly wished the patient would sleep for hours longer