' 'Yes,' he replied, 'but it's not
our business whether it's risky or not. My orders are to go through.'
Soon after he fell. He was barely twenty years of age.
II
_'I hate war: that is why I am fighting'_
There is a garden in Vlamertynghe with a marble seat overturned beside a
smashed tree, a corner just made for lovers, once. An enormous crump
hole fills the greater part of the garden, and the wall has fallen
outwards in one mass leaving the fruit trees standing in a line, their
arms outstretched. Across on the other side of the road Captain Norman
Stewart lies buried. But his memory lives in the hearts of men, and
wherever the 2nd battalion gathers round its braziers and in the glow of
them the stories of the heroes of the regiment are passed on from the
veterans to the younger men, Stewart will be remembered with reverence
as one who not only upheld but created regimental tradition.
It was a bombing affair in which he died, detachments of Suffolks,
Middlesex, and Royal Scots, under his leadership, being ordered to drive
the enemy out of the tip of the salient. Barricades made progress almost
impossible in face of a murderous machine-gun fire.
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