A “Blue Grass” Canadian
Sergeant McClintock Was Brave Enough to Confess War Has Its Scare
While the war was at its worst one of our boys, a Lieutenant, who had done trench service from “support” to going “over the top,” was, after serious wounds, invalided home as a training officer. He wore a medal on his breast that attested his bravery, but in a little talk at a club dinner he said, “If you hear any fellow say he was not scared when going ‘over the top’ or when scuttling around under shell and gun fire, you may safely set him down as a darned liar or as a mental defective. We do get scared a plenty—but we keep on fighting. It is true a man may forget his scare in the excitement of action, and generally does; but he has moments when the red goes out of his face.”
Some of the coolest, bravest men taking part in desperate engagements have made similar statements. The thing in war is not a question of “to be scared or not to be scared,” but of unfailing obedience to orders in spite of colorless cheeks and tremblings of the flesh. That is an impression one gets from such accounts of war as that of Sergeant Alexander McClintock, a Kentucky boy, who felt the lure so keenly that in October, 1915, he hurried over to Canada and as soon thereafter as formalities permitted he joined the Canadian Grenadier Guards. In due course the Guards were sent across and were dropped into the front trenches in Belgium. From that time onward until he was invalided home wearing a Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous bravery young McClintock had adventures not a few, enough and varied to make fascinating the book he wrote, Best o’ Luck, which the George Doran Company published early in 1918. The Sergeant tells his story capitally, whether recounting experiences with those formidable and ghoulish beasts, the trench rats, or encounters with the not altogether admirable trench Hun. For a long time the life in the trenches was dull monotony, about the only relief in the way of amusement being found in shooting rats as they scurried along the parapet. He says: