Homecoming
of Corporal Gordon Thompson,
Private Guy Winter and Private Ed. B. Ilton --
great popular gathering and presentation of purses.
Finally, after several
postponements, Corporal Gordon Thompson (photo) and Private Guy S.
Winter (photo), of Simcoe's first contingent, and Private Ed. B. Ilton
(photo), who enlisted with the 76th over two years ago, arrived in
Simcoe Saturday on the 7:30 p.m. train from Stratford.
A very great crowd had rushed
from one depot to the other and was on hand to witness their arrival.
There was great cheering when the boys stepped off their car onto the
platform.
All three boys were, to the
casual observer, looking fit. It was only when one got close and began
to talk to them that the signs of the long and terrible strain of the
trenches were visible.
Winter wears gold stripes for
two wounds. His first wound was gotten at Langemarck, and he was in
England a long time before getting back to the fighting.
Thompson has only one stripe,
and that was for a wound in the leg received not long ago. It is not,
however, the wound that bothers him
-- but a life of 25 weary months of trench warfare.
Ilton was not wounded. His
trouble comes from being completely buried by a shell, that failed to
hit him, but the effects of which
he will probably carry to his grave.
From the depot the crowd
drifted to the Armoury, where
Mayor George Williamson read an address and presented
each boy with a purse containing a $10 gold piece.
