A LITTLE MATTER OF EXCHANGE *

I SHALL NEVER lose the vivid, burning sense of shock I got on a certain trip to Washington when I got off the “Senator” and started through the station with a Negro porter carrying my bag —more from habit than from necessity, for the bag on that short trip was not very heavy. Just ahead of me walked five boys in a row, each of whom had lost a leg, and two of whom had lost an arm in addition to a leg. They were walking on crutches, and each boy was carrying his own bag.

I was curious to know why somebody was not carrying their bags. “It seems terrible for those crippled boys to be carrying their own bags, porter. Here, give me my bag and take theirs.” “Them guys don’t want no help.

I’se tried to help ’em. It makes “em mad. They has pride, they has. Us porters done learned that.

They don’t want no help.” That was my first experience in actually seeing five boys who had lost their legs in the war, and it was also my first insight into the way they felt about it. I had an awakening through that experience. A month afterward I was in an Eastern rehabilitation center where the Army was bringing five hundred wounded boys a month to get them ready to go back into civilian life.

It was a beautiful spot in a luxury hotel. Their wives were with them; they had good meals and the most pleasant surroundings. The chaplain in charge told me a story which stirred and thrilled me. A mother and father who had three sons in the war were notified that one of their sons was in that hotel and they could see him if they cared to visit him.

He had lost a leg, and he had been kept there a month before the Army notified his parents that he was there or invited them to visit him. They were giving the boy an opportunity to get adjusted to the loss of his leg and learn to use an artificial leg. Thus the shock to boy and parents would be softened. The mother and father went, found their boy, and discovered that he was on top of the situation, laughing, joking, getting ready for the new life.

He was certainly not downhearted. But on their first day, as they started down a long corridor for lunch, the parents passed an open door into another ward; and as they passed they heard a voice: “Hey, Mom!

Hey, Dad! Here I am! Here I am—in here!” It was a second son, who had lost both legs.

But the Army had not yet notified the parents that their second son was in the hos- pital, for it was feared that he had not as yet adjusted himself to the new condition of being legless. The father and mother turned back and went into the ward, weeping when they saw what had happened to their second son— that both his legs were gone.

When the father could control him- self he said, “Son, how did you lose your legs?” “Lose them? I didn’t lose them, Dad. I gave them in exchange for a clear conscience.”