Inspirational Story:
Lyman was 14 years old when Canada entered The Great War.  It was August 5, 1914 and Britain declared war on behalf of the whole British Empire.  Lyman was sitting in school when word came and all the boys simply got up, left class and rushed down to the recruiting office to join up.

Because they were only 14 none of then were allowed to join, but because Lyman was big for his age and lied about his age, he not only got in, but also after a few short months found himself in the trenches of France fighting the Germans.

On mornings when they would be ordered to go over the top, climb up over the mud walls and charge the Germans across no man’s land, they were never surprised.  They knew it was coming before the orders came.  The rum ration would be lifted for breakfast and they could drink all they wanted.  Courage in a bottle.

Christmas came.  Months had passed and neither army had gotten anywhere.  Still the same trenches, the same no man’s land.  It was decided to pause and observe Christmas.  Christmas Eve the Germans and the Canadians all left their trenches, met in the middle of no man’s land, built bonfires, got drunk together on some of that bottled courage, sang Christmas songs, generally hung out with each other and told tearful stories of home.

After the party they all went back to their respective trenches, had Christmas Day to sleep off their hangovers and at 12:01 midnight on December 26^th, started shootin’.

It was a different world back then – all just a bit confusing for young Lyman.

It was supposed to be “the war to end all wars”, but, instead, just turned out to be another one in a long continuing line of human malfunction.

No one seems to know how Lyman got out of those trenches – whether the Germans won or whether it was the Canadians, but we do know that one morning Lyman woke up sick at the bottom of a shell hole somewhere else in France.  As he came to, he realized he had been mustard gassed.  Groggily he tried to get up, but was too sick to stand.  As he lay there on his back alone and frightened, he suddenly became aware that he was not alone.  He opened his eyes and there standing over him was a German soldier pointing his rifle down at him.  As Lyman groped for his pistol, the German pulled the trigger.  The rifle misfired.  Click instead of bang.

Back in World War I the misfiring of a gun was not exactly as rare an occurrence as one might imagine.  We were definitely beyond the musket stage, but not that far advanced.

Still lying on his back, Lyman aimed his pistol at the German who yet stood over him.  Now the tables were turned.  Lyman fired.

Yet again, click instead of bang.  Now fate had stepped in.  Two misfirings in a row.  Two young lives spared – for the moment.

At that point the German reversed his hold on his rifle, raised it high over his head and brought it crashing down rifle butt first in the direction of Lyman’s helmet-less head.  At the last second Lyman was able to protect himself raising his arm and absorbing most of the blow with his wrist before the butt of the rifle went into his head.

We’ll never know what happened to the German.

Sometime later Lyman came to once again, this time having been knocked unconscious.  The wrist that had probably saved his life was in terrible shape.  The blow from the German was delivered with such fury that the butt of the gun had passed through Lyman’s arm on the way to his head.  His hand hung badly broken from a demolished wrist by only a few scraps of skin and tendon.

Somehow he stopped the bleeding.  Somehow he wrapped and bound the arm with his shirt.  Somehow he walked and stumbled back to the front lines of the Canadian army and found an army medic.

There they were sawing off arms and legs like there was no tomorrow.  He lay on the operating table as the medic, who seemed the same age as Lyman, unwrapped what was left of his wrist.  “We’ll have to take your hand off.” was all he said.  Lyman began to cry.

The medic looked pityingly at Lyman probably sensing the child in him and asked, “Hey kid, how old are you?”  This time Lyman told the truth.  “I’m 14.”

The medic replied, “Why you’re still growing!  Perhaps that hand can be saved.”

He bandaged the hand and wrist back up and sent Lyman back to the base hospital.  “They’re doing miracles there”, he told him.

It being 1914, there were no helicopters available, so Lyman walked 12 miles holding his precious arm.

The doctors sewed his hand back on to his arm and reconnected the destroyed tendons with catgut.  They had to remove about 2 inches of wrist and so Lyman lived the rest of his life in special tailored shirts and jackets.  But he had full use of his hand, and though he could not make a fist, he went on to play the drums professionally using that hand to express the rhythms of his mind.

Lyman, for the rest of his life, had dreams of running in a line of soldiers across no man’s land as the German machine guns blazed watching the men out of the corner of his eye getting mowed down.  Closer and closer.  Then the bullets would pass him by and on he would run, living still.  Why him?  He had no idea.  But some lived and many died.

Lyman lived so that I might tell this story.  He was my father. (Read part 2 here.)

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.