Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/54

 sore at the wide, wide world, and I don't blame him, I'll tell you why. When the war was throwed open to all corners, Lem didn't wait to see if his number would win a free trip to Europe in the draft raffle; he throws up his job, hauls off, and enlists. Drew City got hysterical and give him a send-off which would of satisfied Babe Ruth.

As Lem himself says, the day he was born, the day he started for camp, and the day he stepped off the train coming back from the war was the three biggest days in his life! On the last two days mentioned Lem could of married any girl in Drew City, took any job, borrowed any amount of money, even robbed the First National Bank, and he'd of had everybody's good wishes. He was what is known as a "hero," and Drew City went double cuckoo over him. Especially when he come back from France, wounded and with a Croix de Guerre on his chest, pinned there by a big French general on the account Lem goes crazy and captures a German machin-gunmachine-gun [sic] nest all by himself.

That got in all the papers, put Drew City on the map, and Lem in the hospital. Now Lem was back of the gent's furnishing counter again, ignored and forgot. Even the kids don't pester him no more to see his medal or where he was wounded. Old Ajariah Stubbs says Lem ain't got no push in him. He had some push in him when he went through them Jerrys, didn't he?

"They ain't nothin' in bein' a hero!" says Lem bitterly, sipping his drink and opening up on his favorite subject. "What good did all them cheers do