UPSC 2013 CDS 2 English Paper

Passage–VI

  I was very fond of the old soldier in our little town. He had only one leg, having lost the other somewhere in Assam in 1942. He used to tell me about his adventures. He told me that he had run away from home to join the army. He had experienced his first battle in the Libyan desert. Out of his dozens of war stories, the one I liked best was the one of his escape from a Japanese prison-of-war camp in Burma. He told me again and again how he walked two hundred miles in two weeks. On the way he was bitten on the toe by a poisonous snake and he had to cut off part of the toe in order to survive. But by the time he got to an Indian camp the wound had turned septic and the leg had to be amputated. He is, however, quite contented with his lot.