Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/100

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THE MINE

SOME ARE BORN HUNS, AND OTHERS HAVE HUNS THRUST UPON THEM

“Last night we exploded a mine under a redoubt in the enemy’s trenches, and successfully occupied the crater. A considerable number of Germans were killed.” Thus the official communiqué.

And yet the great powers that be have no idea that this small local success was entirely due to David Jones—sometime miner in a coal-field in South Wales. In fact, the betting is about a fiver to an acid drop that they have no idea that he exists. Bar the police in his local village, who disliked him intensely, and his N.C.O.’s out here, who disliked him still more, very few people do know that he exists. Undersized, in every way an undesirable acquaintance, a silent and morose man, it is nevertheless an undoubted fact that had it not been for David Jones, the

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