Praise be, a Red Newman story from 67 years ago and from a man who was there, William Green of Cambridge, Ont., who relates: Between the battles of Vimy Ridge and Hill 70, we were out on rest in a town named Barlin where the Dumbells were playing to their usual full houses. When I saw the show, I happened to be sitting next to Canon Scott, the beloved padre of the 1st Div. Newman, one of the Dumbells troupe, spotted the padre in the audience and immediately told a story. A dying soldier in hospital asked Padre Scott to pray for him. The padre knelt beside the bed and said a long prayer. The soldier asked for another, then another. Canon Scott was finally constrained to ask why the soldier wanted so many prayers. The soldier replied: “Well, padre, your breath smells so much like h...

B.M. Khokhar of Halifax, a retired Indian Army officer, sends us a story about Mahatma Gandhi. King George V was anxious to meet Gandhi and invited him to Buckingham Palace for tea. Despite the King’s strictness about court dress and protocol, Gandhi arrived in his usual loincloth, sandals, shawl and dangling watch. Afterwards, someone asked Gandhi whether he wore enough to suit the King. Gandhi replied: “The King had enough on for both of us.”    

Joan Kraft of Calgary says her mother was always singing and that during WW II, with three sons overseas, she kept abreast of all the popular war songs and sang them as she went about her daily chores. Shortly before she died at 86, she received a visit from an acquaintance who was a born-again Christian. Stepping over the threshold of my mother’s modest home, she intoned: “Praise the Lord.” “And pass the ammunition!” my mother belted out.