Kiltie McCoy; An American Boy with an Irish Name Fighting in France as a Scotch Soldier (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT fall in. The command was whispered in the darkness. No smoking and no talking. This admonition was also given in a whisper. The wind is whistling Yankee Doodle between my knees, I mumbled, as a cold gust caught me. Make it whistle Th' Bonnie Braes o' Scotland, said a big Scotchman near me. Silence, bawled somebody from out the darkness in tones that could be heard all over the British Isles. Forr-r-red, came the whispered command. Away we marched into the darkness, out of the billets and over to the beautiful estate of Lord Hamilton. It was so dark I could not see even my next man, for since the Zeps first raided England few lights are burned and these are carefully shaded. Down along the road and through the beautiful woods of this fine old estate we tramped. The liquid mud sloshed around our feet and we had visions of boots to polish in the morning. Somebody cursed gently. Silence, there, roared out of the darkness. I reached out my hand to touch my next man. He was not there. I knew where he was. Up there in tlie angles of the old castle were the pretty maids of Lord Hamilton's household waiting for their soldier lovers. We were in line advancing through the woods. Lie down, came the whispered order. Around each of us were twenty-four yards of kilt3, beneath us was mud and then more mud. Lie down, and then spend all day to-morrow scrubbing kilts and ironing the pleats ? Not much. I squatted on my knees, holding my kilts up around me; and everybody else did the same. Lie down, bawled Colonel Dykes, a little fellow about sixty years old but with more pep than most of us youngsters had. You're under fire. We couldn't see any shells so nobody worried. A hand caught m...