OCR Text |
Show WORLD WAR : YARNS : by Lieut. Frank E. Hagan A Hoodoo That Wasn't If you are one of Jiose timorous Individuals In-dividuals who believe that the number 13 Is a jinx, talk to a former member of one evacuation hospital unit which served over there. He will tell you that there's absolutely nothing to that superstition at all. If there had been, not one of the men who served with Evacuation Hospital No. 13 would ever have come home. That number alone would have been enough to prove their undoing, not to mention the other ways In which 13 figured In the history his-tory of that outfit. Here is what Jack R. C. Cann, a former member, now a Michigan newspaper man, has to say about it : "Evacuation Hospital 13 was organized or-ganized by order of the War department depart-ment and came Into being January 13, 191& The first promotions were 13 privates to privates first class. We boarded ship at Newport News on the night of July 13, i918 and took 13 days nnd 14 nights to cross to Brest. Thirteens ran so persistently through our company history that we began purposely contriving Jo evolve new situations In which the figures appearedsuch ap-pearedsuch as placing 13 tents in a row, nnd so forth. "In January, 1919, we went 'on tour' In Luxembourg with a company vaudeville vaude-ville show which we called the 'Jinx Chasers.' With our drivers we had 13 in the company nnd showed In many outlying towns, in Berdorf, Luxembourg, Lux-embourg, using the porch of the hotel as a stage with the headlights of two ambulances as spotlights." |