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Lieutenants Taylor and Langmuir were both busy at their sections. Langmuir was one of the "finds" of the 48th. He joined us at Long Branch by coaxing me very hard to give him a commission. I hesitated on account of his youth, but finally consented because I recognized a gleam in his hazel eyes that told me that if the occasion arose he would be a man of high courage.
Captain McGregor went down with a wound in the head, but he still kept on using his rifle till a second bullet laid him low. Lieutenant Langmuir, revolver in hand, fell after he had killed eight of the foe. He had more than evened the score at the head of his platoon. Smith and Macdonald fought like lions. Again and again they charged the Germans with the bayonet.
Wireless, or radio, telegraphy was the invention of a nineteen-year-old boy, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian; but it has been greatly extended and developed at the hands of four Americans: Fessenden, Alexanderson, Langmuir, and Lee De Forest. It was De Forest's invention that made possible transcontinental and transatlantic telephone service, both with and without wires.
Lieutenant Langmuir was then piloting me along his section. "Out in front, there on the left, there is a dead French officer caught in the German wire. He has been hanging there since last November. The Germans have left him there. There is nothing now but a blue coat and red trousers." This certainly was the worst corner in the way of trenches I had seen since we came to Flanders.
Some distance behind came Captain McGregor, his two hundred and forty men tall as pine trees, with Lieutenant Langmuir and Lieutenant Taylor at the head of their platoons, both well over six feet. Next came Captain McLaren, always staid and correct, his company well pulled together, going so fast that a word of caution had to be given to them.
He was famed both at home, in Canada, and abroad as a student and an athlete. He pulled a good oar, played a splendid game of football, hockey and lacrosse. He was an all round star, "a born leader of men," as Lieutenant Alex. Sinclair, himself a well known athlete, said to me when he was pleading Taylor's cause for a commission. Both Taylor and Langmuir were very fearless men.
The most mounted and took place, the procession put itself into motion with clatter and laughter. The children and boys ran after to where the road dipped over the hill. A cluster of village folk turned the long, descending street. In passing they spoke to Alexander and Ian. "Who was married? Jock Wilson and Janet Macraw, o' Langmuir." The two lounged against the kirkyard wall, beneath the yews.
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