Enlightening experience

I had an interesting experience going out there on that one, and I recounted this one time when the Japs entered World War Two. I heard somebody in a restaurant one morning cursing the Japs high, wide and handsome and said there never was a decent Jap born, all the rest of it. I said I was having coffee on the other side of the restaurant and when I went to pay my bill he spied me, and he said, “Here’s Pat. He’ll tell you all about it.” He says, “He knows them and they were in the first war too.” And I said, “Yes, they were in the first war and they were on our side in the first war. The battalion next to us, the 50th battalion, had a platoon that was Japanese and they were fighting along with us in Vimy.” “And,” I said, “the morning that I got wounded, I was trying my best to get out to (Inaudible) dragging along and I said there was lots of fellows passing me, slightly wounded. They had been wounded in the arm or some thing like that they were going right along as fast as they could. Never stopped to look.” “And finally,” I said, “one fellow did stop.” He said, “You’re pretty badly wounded, eh? ” “Well,” I said, “I guess so.” He said, “You put your arm around my shoulder. I’ll help you out.” So I said I put my arm around his shoulder, across his shoulders, you know . . . quite a little piece from that I felt my hand getting warm there, and then I stopped and I looked at it and I said it was all covered in blood I said his whole shoulder was shot off. Seemed to be. The whole thing was partly gone. “Yeah, what’s that got to do with that? ” he says. “Well that was one of your “dirty little Japs” that you were ridiculing.” I said, “You’d better be careful about how your talking about people because of their race.” And I said, “Think that one over.” Well, that was an enlightening experience right there.