That was Paddy Joe . . . He’d Been Blown to Bits

My men, we worked hard. The only thing, one day somebody passed on to me that Sergeant Long had been killed. He was my best pal, we had been together for many . . . I learned quite a bit from this Irishmen. He was known as Paddy Joe, and well I, I just went out of my cotton picking mind. I went looking over, he was around Mount Cameron. And I thought, if I can go there and probably change that information. But when I arrived there I thought I’d look for someplace where other people wouldn’t look. That was my way of doing things, finding things that people can’t. My guardian saint is the Sacred Heart and I wear it all the time and I found a boot and our boot on this side of it was our regimental number. And this boot was five, H6005, that was Paddy Joe. He had been blown to bits. I don’t know what happened for maybe three days. But I came back to my lines and my corporals and my men did well even though I wasn’t . . . suddenly, when I came to, they had done exactly what I would have asked them to do. Lucky. Canadians.