INTERESTING LETTER FROM KENNETH HAIG
Tells how he got wounded. "All British Ships Sunk By Submarines, " Says German Officer.
Queen's Canadian Military Hospital; Shorncliffe, England, Nov. 21/15
It is some months since I have written you and in the meantime I have managed to make connections with a bullet. It was just a month ago. Our aircraft guns had hit an aeroplane and it was forced to descend. It came down just like a bird and straight for where I was. Thinking it was to make the German lines I ran into the emplacement to bring out the machine gun to turn on it. I knelt down behind the gun and was lifting the gun off the tripod when I felt a burning sensation in my leg, and needless to say, my interest in the aeroplane had altogether gone.
However, at the dressing station the one on the table before me was the German pilot, just seventeen years of age. He had been taken prisoner and his comrade killed. I had a talk with him as our stretchers were side by side. He asked me what they would do with him. I told him he would be treated all right and would be sent to England as a prisoner in a few days. He answered me that it would be impossible to do that as ENGLAND HADN'T ANY SHIPS LEFT, AS THEY HAD BEEN
ALL SUNK BY SUBMARINES. That will show that even German officers for he was one, are duped with a lot of inventions.
From the field ambulance the next stage is to the distribution hospital at Bailleul. I happened to be in there the day the King inspected. He went here and there and spoke to the chaps. He happened to stop in front of my stretcher and said, "Well, my boy, how are you getting on." I do not know what I said but know I had to check myself from saying "Fine and dandy."
From there I went to Etaples where I was for three days, when I awoke from a little sleep to see the "slightly" ticket above my head. Another trip by train to Calais, then a change onto a hospital ship brought Dover, and then this hospital. This is the first Canadian hospital I have been in but may say the British chaps like to get into them. It is too much like the Army in the English military hospitals.
Of course you know Col. Armour is surgeon-in-chief of this hospital and comes down for a day or so every week to the operations. When he found I was from Cobourg he sat down and had quite a talk. He is a man Cobourg can well be proud of and who is giving a lot of his valuable time to his work here.
You cannot imagine how it feels to get inside a good bed after nine months that I had without a break in dirty old Flanders. I do not expect to be able to go back before Spring and at nights I think of the few of the 5th Battalion just about 100, who went out at the beginning who are still stamping their feet in the trenches trying to keep circulation going.
England seems the same. Really, you would think some do not know that the country is at war. Have not seen a zeppelin yet but some Canadian Artillery chaps had some bombs drop on them a half a mile away from here. They don't look as dangerous to some of us as they would a year ago.
Guess I will close with best regards. Yours sincerely,
KENNTH J. HAIG
