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A Fallen Idol.
A Fallen Idol. 
 

Western Mail, Thursday 2 November 1933, page 2

A Fallen Idol.

Dear "Non. Com."- Hereunder a yarn for the page.

Of the many who found themselves in Blackboy Camp signed up for the duration, the members of our tent felt honoured that it contained one upon whose tunic were the ribbons of two campaigns.

Eager always to learn, we formed an attentive audience when the old-timer had the floor. Yes, he had been wounded stopped one in Africa, and the scar across his throat was proof of a Boer's markmanship, although it in no way cramped his efforts to quench a Sahara thirst.

He seldom ornamented the parade ground if he could avoid it, and while we "shunned" and "formed fours," the old timer by a flanking movement would be under cover at the Helena Vale. He helped pay the rent there, and the rations from our tent were bartered for the cause.

These excursions of our hero were sympathetically overlooked, for in one who had swallowed much of the sand of Khartoum, we realised that happiness was his portion when the sands of the desert had something wet on top.

Misfortune fell on the "old un," however, when into camp came one who knew him and most of his past, including the time when, on a bender he cut his own throat with a razor, apparently an issue from his earlier soldiering days. So from the pedestal on which we had placed him, our old-timer toppled-to join the ranks of many a fallen idol of the Great War.

"Anzaussie," Yorkrakine.

Those in the story:

Narrator Anzaussie = Unidentified