Under Fire
Askedwhat it feels like to be under fire, a soldier replied: "It makes you sweat waiting for the shock of getting hit. It is the suspense that tries. The first few weeks at the war are awful. You awaken in your sleep and think you are being fired at. Not that the German infantry are good marksmen (the artillery are). Why, the other day I noticed a chap who had been aiming in my direction for several minutes, and none of ours had been touched. I stood up and said to a chum: 'Watch that chap. I bet you he won't hit me.' And he didn't, for I heard the bullet whistle by several inches wide."
The feeling of waiting to go under fire is thus described: "We were to hold the trenches at all costs, and things began to take a serious turn. It was then that I and my chum took photographs we had with us from our pockets and looked long into the faces of those we had left at home. Thenwe took out our small books and made our wills, and then waited."
A private of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment wrote: "There were many field artillery drivers with spare horses behind a shed, and one was asleep in front of me on a truss of hay. A shell from a 'Black Maria' came over the corner of the shed and dropped not more than 8 feet from me. It killed the poor driver and blew one horse up and the other horses into a heap. It seemed to me as if I had been suddenly thrown into a white hot furnace, and a big metallic door slammed on me. I was dazed for five minutes and shaky all day, but the feeling soon wore off. It is wonderful how soon you get over these things. These 'Black Maria' shells make a screaming noise, followed by a terrific explosion, but the effect is purely local, except for splinters flying. Next day we came under rifle fire as well as big gun fire. Then we knew it. It was not a pleasant sight to see men falling around you screaming. I remember saying to a chap alongside of me, 'I wouldn't give twopence for my chance.'"
"It's a curious sort of feeling," another man wrote, "to be under fire. It's—well you feel that war is a really dangerous thing."
Much of course depends upon the soldier's temperament. An officer had the moral courage towrite in a letter, "I have been under fire a few times now, and like it less every time."
An Indian soldier gave the impression of himself and of his fellows: "The shell fire was a bit troublesome at first, because it was far worse than anything we had ever experienced in frontier fighting, and few of us had had any experience of being under fire. We soon got used to it, and it didn't trouble us more than thunder. The rifle fire wasn't so bad, for the Germans aren't very good shots. Still, it was annoying to us to have to lie still under it when we like to be getting to close grips."
An officer described a retreat under fire as follows: "My platoon (fifty men) was some 200 yards behind the firing line to start with. I was soon ordered to bring them up, which was not a too comfortable job, as shells were bursting by now just in front of us. However, I shouted to the men, telling them to go on, and saying that they would be safer further up the hill. Then the battery doing most of the firing on us stopped for a moment to reload and resight, and I got the men on a hundred yards, and then the shells began bursting like hail just where we had come from. Then they kept altering their range from time to time, and you could sometimes hear the shot and shell come down only a few yards off, and of course you could always hear the shell singing through the air, and sometimes feltthe breath of them. Around me the men behaved splendidly. (The whole regiment has been congratulated on its having done well.) We lay there in the potato crop like partridges. I think we were all too petrified to move; but where we were we lay just below the crest of a ridge waiting to crawl up to see to fire if any German infantry came along. We lay under that shell fire for three hours, and I think that none of us will ever forget the feeling of thinking that the next moment we might be dead—perhaps blown to atoms. I kept wondering what it was going to feel like to be dead, and all sorts of little things that I had done, and places I had been to years ago and had quite forgotten, kept passing through my mind. I have often heard of this happening to a drowning man, but have never experienced it before, and don't want to again! I think you get so strung up that your nerves get into an abnormal condition. My brain seemed extraordinarily cool and collected, which I was proud of and am still; but I looked at my hands and saw them moving and twisting in an extraordinary way, as if they didn't belong to me, and when I tried to use my field-glasses to spy at the Germans, it was as much as I could do with the greatest effort to get them up to my eyes, and then I could scarcely see. When the order to retire came our company got it late. I told my platoon—those who were left—to double back and assemble behind a house in a road behind us. I stopped behind to collect stragglers and to carry a couple of wounded into the house, where the doctor was seeing to them; and I believe I was the last to leave. By this time the bullets had begun to sing all round us, and the German infantry were getting close, so it was high time to clear out. I and a last party of five climbed up a pear tree and over a garden wall, and so, creeping along with the bullets now flying all round, we got over another wall and so up a path exposed for a short way. We ran along this, and I remember, as an instance of the stupid things one does in moments of excitement, my little hair-brush jumped out suddenly from my haversack, and I ran back five or six yards to pick it up, and risked a life for a hair-brush! I found subsequently two holes in my haversack where a bullet had passed through, just grazing my clothes, and it may have been then that it went through."
I did not myself know Mr. Geoffrey Pearson, Lord Cowdray's son, but a friend of his told me so much about him that it was with sorrow that I read the dramatic story of his death. He and a sergeant-major were acting as motor-cyclists with the motor transport, and what happened is thus told by the sergeant-major: "We were going alonga straight piece of road, with open country on either side, and were letting our machines out for all they were worth. We were alone. Suddenly, without the least warning, we seemed to ride into a perfect hailstorm of bullets which came over from somewhere on our left. Ahead of us the road ran into a little wood. 'Come on, we'll ride for it,' I said, and we dashed through in safety. Hardly had we entered the wood belt, however, than we rode into a group of German cavalry—about fifty of them—scattered about on either side of the road. They immediately fired at us. We saw the game was up, as there was no getting away from them at all, so we tumbled off our bikes, put up our hands, and surrendered. The Germans treated us shamefully. They gave us nothing to eat, and taunted and jeered at us at every opportunity. That night we spent in the open, lying on the roadside between two men. We had no overcoats, and it was most bitterly cold. I think I have never been so cold in my life as I was that night. The Germans took us on with them on their advance against the French. They made us go into the trenches with them. We were thrust in the line with the rest under a terrific fire from the French guns and infantry. We decided to make a dash for it. The Germans were all very busy with the fight, and we were able to crawl away unperceivedout of the trenches and through the long grass. Moreover, when we were about 200 or 300 yards away the Germans saw us, and a number of them immediately opened fire. Pearson was shot through the head. We were under fire with a vengeance."
Speaking of a particularly fierce fight a Gordon Highlander said that it might have been a sham one the way the Gordons took it. In the thick of it they sang Harry Lauder's latest. Those who could not sing whistled, and those who could not whistle talked about football, and joked with each other.
One of the West Kent Regiment speaking of the German artillery fire said that the din seems to hit you. You feel as if your ears would burst, and the teeth fall out of your head. He thought little, however, of the enemy's infantry. "If we fired as badly as they do we would be put in jail."
A Dublin Fusilier said that while the shells shrieked blue murder over their heads they smoked cigarettes, sang about the girls, and were as cool as Liffy water. "If I should arrive home safe I think I shall get a job as doorkeeper at an oyster shop, as I am having a course of shell dodging."
Corporal F. Leeming, R.F.A., wrote to his wife: "I am all right, but still have to keep ducking every time a 'messenger from the Kaiser' comes whistling round. It is not exactly like throwing eggs aboutwhen their shells burst. They make a hole in the ground about 20 feet across, and the noise is terrible and nerve-racking. You feel pretty shaky at first."
According to Private Thomas Mulholland, Highland Light Infantry, shells were not as much appreciated at a dance as ladies would have been: "In the trenches last week we held a dance, for want of something better to do. Of course, the only partners were fellow-soldiers; but still it was a change from the monotony of shell fire. Not that the shells were absent, for just when we had settled down to enjoy the jigging the enemy began to worry us with shrapnel. The shells burst all around, and one burst in the middle of a little group of men giving a Gaelic four-hand reel. Every man was killed. After that we thought it best to stop."
Afternoon tea under fire was like this: "The mugs were passed round with the biscuits and the 'bully' as best they could by the mess orderlies, but it was hard work messing without getting more than we wanted. My next-door neighbour, so to speak, got a shrapnel bullet in his tin, and another two doors off had his biscuit shot out of his hand. Private Plant had a cigarette shot out of his mouth, and a comrade got a bullet into his tin of bully beef. 'It saves the trouble of opening it,' was his remark."
One day a shell smashed a breakfast porridge pot, and another scattered a dinner of stew. "Wecursed more about that stew than if we had been hit ourselves."
"It beats Banagher," said a jocular private in the Royal Irish, "how these Germans always disturb us at meal times. I suppose it's just the smell of the bacon that they're after. They seem to look for a blooming Ritz Hotel in the firing line."
Men can even sleep when under fire. "It is a most extraordinary thing," said an officer toThe Daily Telegraphspecial correspondent, "to see soldiers lying on their straw soundly asleep when German shells are bursting all round them. Men keep on snoring even after a shell has burst within 5 or 6 yards over their heads and half filled their trenches with fresh earth. One gets so used to the firing, that, though it may sound incredible, it soon becomes far less noticeable than city traffic, for instance."
"I've Got It"
Sometimesa man after being under fire for a considerable time without being wounded begins to fancy that he has a charmed life and that he is "not for it," as soldiers say. Still, if he is to be a billet for a bullet the bullet will in its own time find him out. Then, he who has been seeing comrades falling on either side of him will find this a more personal matter, an affair of his only. When the end comes to a poor fellow he is generally gone to "another place" before he knows he is dead—as an Irish soldier said.
What does the average soldier say or do when wounded, how does he take it? He usually remarks casually and quietly, "I've got it," or "I'm hit." Men speak and act differently according to temperament, according to moral and physical condition. Some as they roll over give a groan and a cry to mother or wife. Some pray, some curse. An officer said, "I'm done for," but immediately thinking of his men told them to lie down. A soldier when hit said, "I've got a ticket through. I'm putout of mess," but it was not as bad as that. Another fell and said to a chum: "Good-bye, old man. I'm done for. Tell poor old dad I died at the front. I began a letter to him; you finish it."
Sometimes a soldier is too excited to feel a wound until the fight is over. A man wrote in a letter the following when describing the battle of Mons: "When the Germans attacked us we were singing 'Hitchy Koo.' Before we were half through the chorus the man next to me got a wound in the upper part of his arm. He sang the chorus to the finish, and did not seem to know he was hit till a comrade on the other side said, 'Don't you think you had better have it bound up? It's beginning to make a mess.'"
A sergeant sent back to a hospital in England said: "It was at Ypres I was shot. The bullet struck me in the elbow. I felt no pain there and no sensation of any kind, except in the tops of the fingers, which began to stiffen and freeze. But even then I didn't know I was shot. Five or ten minutes afterwards my coat began to stick to my arm, thick blood came down my sleeve, and I realised that I was wounded."
One man, shot through the arm, felt "only a bit of a sting, nothing particular. Just like a needle going into me. I thought it was nothing till my rifle dropped out of my hand and my arm fell." That isthe feeling of a clean bullet wound. Shrapnel, however, "hurts pretty badly."
This is how another man in a letter described being hit: "I didn't know what had happened at the time, but afterwards I found out that a bullet had entered my shoulder, grazed my spine, and lodged pretty firmly in the back of my neck. 'Are you wounded, mate?' asked a corporal who came up to me. 'Looks like it,' I replied, pointing to my shoulder. With that he ripped up the sleeve of my tunic, and had just bound up my wound when a shell struck him full in the back, and he fell forward dead without a word."
A man when hit in the hand jumped out of the trench and shouted to the man who had shot him to come and fight him. "It was hailing lead, so he was pulled back into the trench and told that he was rather amusing, but silly."
Two men are resting in a trench but not lying low enough. One is munching a biscuit, and the other is flicking small pebbles at him. A particularly sharp stone, as the man with the biscuit fancies, strikes him on the neck. He leaps round and demands indignantly, "Say, Bill, did you chuck that stone at me?" Bill denies the charge, and, perceiving the occasion for it, rejoins, "Why, mate, you're wounded." He had got a bullet and not a harmless pebble.
Firing in battle is now carried on at such long distances that if one is in the neighbourhood at all he may not be able to keep out of it. This was once the case with me in China. A hail of bullets came round us and we did not know from whence it came. A man on the right of me fell and said, "I'm hit," and another on the left did the same. As no enemy was visible I thought that it was a grim joke until I saw blood spurting up.
Writing in a letter of a second occasion on which he was wounded, a soldier said: "This makes twice their shrapnel has pipped me. If they do it again I shall say, 'I ain't going to play any more! You are too rough!'"
Another man was hit in the right arm when drinking tea. He carefully transferred the pannikin to the left hand, and finished his tea!
When a bullet got him an Irishman, exclaiming "The brutes have hit me," fired his rifle and said, "That's one back ter them." Then he got hit again and observed, "Be jabers, if they haven't struck me the second toime." A third hit was too much and he expostulated, "That's number three. The blackguards might leave a party alone after they've hit him wance."
With a machine gun a Highlander at a bridge over the river Marne kept back a column of Germans until reliefs came up. When he fell dead and wascarried away thirty bullet wounds were found on his body.
It is strange to hear soldiers at home talking of soldiers who have gone to war, and have been wounded or died. They seldom express pity for them, nor do they feel much. And the want of what might seem a natural sensation is really very fine, for it is due to a conviction that a man has to do his duty, and that to die in the performance of it covers him with honour.
Strange, too, is the way soldiers can joke when hit themselves, or when someone near them has "got it." In one of the Highland regiments there was a very fat pipe major. His legs were like barrels, and when he was shot in them he said, "Weel, I wonder they didna do that before."
Two chums were discussing the relative values of their birthplaces. The Cockney was evidently having the best of the argument, when a shrapnel shell burst above them and the Londoner received a bullet in each leg, while the Birmingham man escaped unhurt.
"I should think you'll give way now!" said the man from Birmingham.
"Why?" asked the Cockney.
"Well, you haven't a leg to stand on," was the reply.
After a little experience of campaigning in Francea young officer wrote, "I tried to like war, having heard and read so many fine things about it, but I could not; it is just beastly." Any one who talks of the glory of war should be invited to walk over a battle field when the fighting has ceased. He will see those who have "got it" from shells or bullets writhing in agony, he will hear many of them asking someone for the love of God to kill them and put them out of their misery.
A member of the Royal Army Medical Corps gives the following vivid picture of a battlefield after the guns had ceased firing:
"The last fight I was in the carnage had been fearful, and dead and dying of both sides were piled together. In one corner you could see a British Tommy with a bad wound lying with his head pillowed on the shoulder of a dying German, while a Frenchman near by was doing his best to cheer them up, and emptying his pockets in quest of some treasures to soothe the last moments of the other two. Close by a British Guardsman was propped against a tree smoking a cigarette and gazing intently at a photograph. Near to him was a wounded Frenchman, holding a little glass in one hand while he tried to curl a straggling moustache with the other. Further along I saw two men, a French artilleryman and a British rifleman, quietly playing cards while awaiting their turn to be takento hospital. Next to them was a man of the Cameron Highlanders, with both legs shattered, munching a stick of chocolate, and trying to hide the twitching of his face as the pain racked his body. I approached another Highlander. 'It's ma birthday the day,' was what he said, with a wry face, and before the words were right out of his mouth he was dead. Under a little cluster of trees we find a party of wounded Germans, English, and French men. They were quietly praying for what they believed to be the last time on earth. Beyond them a Seaforth Highlander was lying with his Testament open at the story of the Crucifixion. He was beyond human aid."
How much more than "beastly" for the wounded must be the waiting for the stretcher-bearers to pick them up and the fear that they may not be able to come or that they may not find them? What torture for the mind there is in the uncertainty!
The next time we are impatient because a train is unpunctual or the dinner a few moments late, we should think of those who wait on battlefields, sometimes in danger of getting more wounds and sometimes exposed to great cold and falling rain or snow.
From Fear to Heroism
A commontopic in letters from the front is the feeling of the writers on going into battle. They were "half mad with excitement"; they "did not know what they were doing"; they felt "hot and cold, and, as it were, stuck to the ground." One remarks, "If anyone tells you that he is not afraid in his first battle, you may be sure that he is a liar."
In a ball-room a girl was overheard asking an officer, who has shown himself brave above the average, what he felt when he went into his first engagement. "My dear young lady," he replied, "I felt like making for the nearest hedge that would hide me comfortably."
The South African soldier and statesman, Louis Botha, was asked what it was like to be on a field of battle, and whether men rise to the occasion. "That depends," he said "on the spirit of the man."
Speaking of the science of slaughter, of which the present war has been an exhibition, a soldier remarked: "I don't believe there is a man livingwho, when first interviewing an 11in. howitzer shell, is not pink with funk. After the first ten, one gets quite used to them, but really, they are terrible!"
When Lord Clive was an ensign, in his first battle he felt almost unable to stand up from fear. Seeing this the captain of his company told him that he used to be that way himself, and then took him by the hand and walked with him where the firing was heaviest. This reassured him, and the great general used to say that no man ever performed a better service for another than this captain did for him.
The bravest soldiers are often the most nervous when they first face an enemy, just as the most eloquent orators are when they begin to speak. This is because men fight and are eloquent by means of nerve power. Each must warm to the work before he gets his nerves under control, and then he astonishes the world, but no one so much as himself.
There is no man so brave as the man who is afraid of being afraid. An officer had a confidential talk a day or two before a battle that was imminent with a subaltern that had just come out. He was delicate looking and nervous. He said that he was a born coward and that he would disgrace himself in his first battle. "I saw him just before the next fight began, looking pitifully white and haggard, and I never saw him again; but I heard that he hadfought like a hero, and that he had lost his life in an effort to save one of his men."
"If one did not know you, Colonel," said a subaltern, "one would say you were afraid." "Boy," was the answer, "if you were half as much afraid as I am you would run away."
Shakespeare represents a hero thus speaking to his body before a battle begins:
"Thou tremblest, my poor body, but if thou didst knowWhere I will bring you before the day is overThou wouldst tremble much more."
This was related by a sergeant of the York and Lancaster Regiment: "Every soldier knows that the first experience of being under fire is terribly unnerving, and the best of men will admit that at times they are tempted to run away. There was a young lad of the Worcestershire Regiment who had this feeling very badly, but he made up his mind that he would conquer it, and this is what he did. He made it a practice to go out of the trench and expose himself to German fire for a bit every day. The poor boy trembled like a leaf, but his soul was bigger than the weak little body holding it, and he went through the terrible ordeal for a week. On the eighth day he was fatally hit. His last words to me were, 'They can't say I was a coward, can they?'"
On one occasion a subaltern of the Munsters was so little afraid of a fight with the Germans that hisonly fear was that they would not come on. The regiment was waiting for a night attack, and waited in vain. Hour after hour passed. The men in the trenches who had been warm with excitement began to feel cold again. Yet still no Germans came. At last the subaltern, who had been walking incessantly up and down behind the trenches like a caged lion, could stand it no longer. He glanced anxiously for the twenty-fifth time at his wrist watch and muttered, "I do hope nothing has happened to them!"
A young soldier wrote: "In the first action I went silly and cried for mother ten times, but all of a sudden courage loomed up in me. I thought I could not have enough nerve to stick a man with a bayonet, but during a charge one goes mad."
Much courage is needed to charge with a bayonet, or to face a bayonet charge. Young soldiers sometimes get a sinking sensation when the order to charge is given. It is horrid putting a bayonet into a man, and it is sometimes difficult to get it out of him. "It was his life or mine," said a soldier describing his first battle, "and I ran the bayonet through him. In war mercy is only for the merciful. It is awful killing big, fine men who have done us no harm; but we do it or they will do it to us."
Private G. Glew, of the Coldstream Guards, wrote: "Once I had my bayonet in a German's shoulder,and could not get it out sharp enough to keep an eye on the German that was behind me with his bayonet ready for me, when the captain drew his revolver and shot him, saving my life."
Soldiers do not like to talk about what they feel during a battle, but one man did tell a newspaper interviewer that "the sensation of killing a man is not nice. Once done, however, your blood grows hot, and you seem to see all red. A passion unknown in other moments possesses you. The more of your chums you see knocked down, the madder you seem to fight. One gets a kind of bloodthirsty feeling which it is impossible to quell."
Soldiers are nerved to scorn danger from different motives. The highest motive of all is when the "gallant private" who cannot hope for much professional advancement practises his "heroism obscure" simply from a sense of duty. Sometimes ambition urges him on, nor shall we blame him.
A driver in the artillery wrote in a letter home: "We have got some brave men in the British Army, but I saw more than one kneel down and say his prayers the night before a battle was expected." How strange that this man should think that there is any inconsistency between praying and being courageous! Surely the best way of getting rid of fear is to realise by prayer the presence with us of a Higher Power. In several letters men wrote, afterdescribing some danger that they had to face, "I prayed then as I never did before in my life."
A young officer once told me that there was no service like the Holy Communion for men who had to face death. He said he felt "square" afterwards.
Religion under fire is not apologetic; it is quietly dominant. Shadow, darkness and doubt vanish. "My God" is the call of the heart, and a sincere call.
Uncommon Combats
Thefollowing curious bit of war-to-the-knife was related by a sergeant to a newspaper correspondent: "I and four other wounded men got together and hid under some wheat sheaves. Presently one man put out his head to see if the coast was clear, and was spotted by a German soldier. The fellow came towards us, and, grasping his rifle by the barrel, was about to batter out my mate's brains, when I whipped this out (producing a formidable jack-knife) and, springing up, jabbed it into his throat. See, the blood stains are still there. He went down and I with him, and by the time I had finished with this little weapon he was done for. I kept at his windpipe so as not to give him a chance to bawl for assistance. We managed to crawl or limp for some distance in the wake of the army until we came upon Lieutenant B.M.B. Bateman, of the Royal Field Artillery. He helped us to safety."
A knock-out blow was thus described by a youngFrenchman, attached to the Interpreters' Corps: "Last week my parents had a pleasant surprise. I took home to supper one of your brave Tommies. I met him as interpreter, and he told me his story. He fought the Boches (nickname for the Germans) from the beginning of the war, and was at Mons, Charleroi, Landrecies, Soissons, and the battles of the Marne and Aisne. On October 15th he was captured by a German patrol, composed of six Uhlans, and was disarmed, but kept his horse. Three of the six went to get some tea, one went for an interpreter, and two watched Tommy. After a short time one of the two lay down on the grass, while the other stood by the side of their prisoner. Tommy was still for a quarter of an hour, and he then suddenly gave the Boche an 'uppercut,' and he fell exhausted. The other Boche got up and went for him, but the English Tommy knocked him out with the first blow, and jumped on his horse. The other Boches had heard the struggle, and as he rode off the bullets whistled past his ears, but luckily he escaped. I asked him if he was a boxer, and he answered me, 'Rather! I matched with my cousin Fred Welsh, who is now a world champion in the light weights!'"
Corporal Isherwood, 2nd Manchester Regiment, when he came home wounded, told how a boy led his regiment in a bayonet charge. "On October20th the Germans were all around us, and their fire enfiladed our trenches. First our lieutenant was wounded, then the sergeant, and we were left without a single officer to command the platoon. We were wondering what to do when a drummer-boy, of eighteen, the baby of the company, threw up his cap, and with a ringing cheer yelled: 'Fix bayonets, lads.' We did, and charged the advancing Germans. The boy was in the act of bayoneting a German when the latter shouted, 'For God's sake, don't stick me.' 'It is too late,' returned the youngster, 'it is through you.'"
Corporal Gleeson, of the Coldstream Guards, tells this story:
"At Soissons our attention was attracted by a young lad of the Connaught Rangers. He was fighting single-handed against seven Germans. He was doing nicely, but just as he was withdrawing his bayonet from the fifth German to go down, one of them caught him, and he dropped. We fought our way over, and finished the other two, and just managed to catch the poor lad before his last breath went. 'You saw it,' he said, and we said we had. 'You think I did my best, and they won't blame me because seven was too many for me? I'm only a boy, and they were such big chaps.' We told him if any man said or hinted he hadn't done his best, and more, there wasn't one ofus wouldn't kill him. He smiled ever so sweetly, and then he died. We drew our coat sleeves across our eyes to stop or hide the blinding tears that came in spite of us."
The London Scottish Regiment gave a good account of themselves in their first fight, and showed that for pluck and dash this "crack" regiment of Territorials—the first Territorial corps to take their place in the firing line—has nothing to learn from even the pick of the Regulars. They were ordered to dislodge from an important position a large body of the much vaunted Bavarian troops, and they did it in a way that Sir John French highly praised.
On one occasion the Kaiser, when addressing a Bavarian corps, said, "I want the Bavarians to meet the British—just once!" The Bavarians have met the British, represented by the London Scottish, "just once," and it was once too often for them.
Before the war the Germans used to say that God had given British soldiers long legs to run away with, and that men in kilts instead of trousers could not fight. They know better now, and the London Scottish greatly helped to enlighten them.
Shouting "Remember you're Scottish, give them the bayonet!" the London Scottish rushed into the village they had to take. The defenders resistedwith great obstinacy, but at last they broke and fled.
On the next day the regiment had, without adequate cover, to hold a position in face not only of infantry, but of artillery fire. At the end of the day it was necessary to retire through a storm of lead, and they marched back as steadily as on parade. "A perfect hell, it was," said an eye-witness, "and the wonder is that any of them got back."
The noise of bagpipes must be very terrifying to those who hear it for the first time, and it seems on one occasion to have been instrumental in winning for some men of another Scotch regiment a bloodless battle. On a dark, rainy night the men making a detour of a field of roots and, stalking their prey as silently as cats, got up to a position from which the enemy had to be ejected. Then the Scots yelled, let off rifles, rattled tins, and made the bagpipes speak up or rather squeal up. The Germans were not soothed by the charms of this music, but were seized with panic and fled.
Private S.A. Geary, R.A.M.C., wrote the following: "I was near the trenches against which the Kaiser sent his crack Guard Corps, the picked men of his army. Several times they got right up to the trenches but were hurled back by the bayonet. One young officer did a magnificent bit of work.Nothing could stop him; he jumped out of his trench and yelled, 'Old England for ever! Follow me, lads.' With half a company he dashed forward for quite 50 yards, and he and his men simply performed miracles. As I watched them I was spellbound. They seemed to possess superhuman strength. Caked from head to foot in mud they presented the most fearful picture that could be imagined as they attacked like wild beasts. The big Germans were rushing on four to one, but they could not beat our fellows back. Those who were not killed or wounded got away to shelter, and our boys returned to their trenches cheering and shouting. Five minutes later the Germans came again and again, but not a single man got within 10 yards of the trenches."
One of the Scots Greys, when invalided home, told of fighting with frying-pans. "A dozen or so Germans who must have lost their way, came stumbling into our camp after dark and received quite a warm welcome. No guns were handy, but we grabbed hold of the first things handy, and as it was supper-time there were plenty of domestic articles which proved their worth. Dixey-tins and frying-pans, containing our supper, were banged on their heads until they had had enough and gave themselves up to our tender care."
A detachment of British cavalry, while playingwater polo in the Oise, suddenly spotted a patrol of German Uhlans. The British, naked as they were, jumped on their horses and charged the enemy.
A private of the East Surrey Regiment recorded this grim experience: "Suddenly, out of the darkness, a German appeared near, making straight for me with a fixed bayonet. He came right above me as I stood in the trench, and thrust his bayonet down towards my face. I just managed to catch hold of it with my left hand pushing it from me, and at the same time I thrust my own bayonet up into the German. His rifle went off as he fell down on top of me, and the bullet went into my left hand."
It would seem from the following that a combat caused by love is very severe. "There were two men of the Connaught Rangers who had a row about a girl. Under ordinary circumstances they would have gone to the back of the trenches and settled it with their fists, but the regimental peacemaker intervened with a suggestion that struck both as being reasonable. It was that instead of spoiling each other's beauty they should take it out of the Germans, and let the girl decide which was the better man of the two when the facts were put before her by a comrade. They agreed, and that day they went into action with more than usual eagerness. When it came to close quarters each of these chaps fought all he knew against as many Germans as hecould find to stand up against him. We all knew what was behind it, and so did not go to their assistance, but when the day was over everybody agreed that the one who had downed eight Germans without getting a scratch was the better man of the two. The girl thought otherwise, for she decided in favour of the chap who got badly wounded in his fight with the sixth German."
A corporal, named W.R. Smith, who has returned from the war, tells of a chivalrous duel that took place between himself and one of the enemy. On one occasion the corporal had got close to a German, and both levelled their rifles. The corporal pulled the trigger first, but the weapon jammed. The German, seeing what had happened, lowered his rifle and offered to give him another chance. "Of course," says the corporal, "there was nothing for it but to shake hands and walk away from each other."
A Royal Engineer told this story in reference to the mole-like manner of attacking the enemy's trenches: "We spent two days on a long mine out towards the German lines, and just when we were getting to the close of our job we heard pickaxes going as fast and hard as you like, and then the wall of clay before us gave way, showing a party of Germans at the same game! You never saw men more astonished in your life, and they hadn't quiterecovered from their shock when we pounced on them. We had a pretty sharp scrap down there indeed, but we got the best of it, though we had four of our chaps laid out. One German devil was just caught in time with a fuse which he was going to apply with the mad idea of blowing us all up!"
In the Trenches
"Punch"represents a soldier newly arrived at the front asking, "What's the programme?" An old hand in the trenches answers, "Well, you lie down in this water, and you get peppered all day and night, and you have the time of your life!" The new arrival remarks, "Sounds like a bit of all right; I'm on it!"
This was a joke, but it was very like what our soldiers seem to have felt. One of them, for instance, in the Durham Light Infantry, wrote: "We are in the thick of it, and enjoying it. We had an engagement on Sunday, and managed to drive back the enemy. We are still at it, but as happy as sand-boys. When I read in books of the coolness of men under fire I thought somebody was blathering, but after eight weeks of it I can say that no book has ever done justice to the coolness of British soldiers under conditions that would try anybody. The night I was hit we were just leaving the trenches for an interview with some Germans who were tryingsome of their fancy tricks about our left. As we stood up there was a ghastly shower of bullets and shells bursting all round. Into it we had to go, and as we looked ahead one of our chaps said, 'I think we'll have to get our great coats, boys; it's raining bullets to-night, and we'll get wet to the skin if we're not careful.' Men of C company started laughing, and then they took to singing, 'Put up your umbrella when it comes on wet.' The song was taken up all along as we went into the thick of it, and some of us were humming it as we dashed into the German trenches. The Germans must have thought us a mad crew. Another day there was an officer of the Cheshire Regiment who was a bit of a cricketer in his day. He got uncomfortable after lying in the trenches for so long, and he raised his leg in shifting his position. He was hit in the thigh, and as he fell back all he said was, 'Out, by George! leg-before-the-wicket, as the umpire would say, Better luck next innings.'"
A trooper of the 15th Hussars wrote: "The horror of the nights spent in the trenches in our soaking wet clothes will never leave me while life lasts. The bare thought of it sends rheumatic pains all through me. We minded that more than the German fire, but you must understand that this isn't a grouse. Soldiers know that they have to put up with that sort of thing in war time, and our officers were nobetter off. Some of them were worse. There was an officer of the artillery who gave up his blanket to a poor devil who had the shivers something awful. The officer caught pneumonia and died a week later at the base hospital. One night, when it was unusually wet and miserable, and some of us had got all the humps that were ever seen on a camel's back, the assembly sounded, and we were paraded at midnight. We fell in, glad to have something to take us away from our miserable surroundings. Talk about fight? Why, we fought like demons. We had all got the 'get at 'em' fever."
A private of the West Kent Regiment wrote to his brother: "We have been living the life of rabbits, for we burrowed ourselves in trenches at ----, and here we remained for over fifty hours. It was an exciting and not unpleasant experience. The bursting of shells overhead was continuous, and it became monotonous. One chap used to raise a cheer each time shrapnel and shell spoke, making such remarks as 'There's another rocket, John.'"
Another when hit in the knee calmly remarked, "I can't play now on Christmas Day for Maidstone United."
"If all goes well we are going to have a football match to-morrow, as I have selected a team from our lot to play the Borderers, who are always swanking what they can do."
"There's a corporal of a regiment, that I won't name, that was a ticket collector on the railway before the war, and when he was called back to the colours he wasn't able to forget his old trade. One day he was in charge of a patrol that surprised a party of Germans in a wood, and, instead of the usual call to surrender, he sang out, 'Tickets, please!' The Germans seemed to understand what he was driving at, for they surrendered at once, but that chap will never hear the end of the story, for when everything else ceases to amuse in the trenches you have only to shout out 'Tickets, please!' to set everybody in fits."
An officer wrote: "We did seventy-eight hours on end in the trenches last spell. This morning we had a football match. Football is the only thing that takes the stiffness out of the men after being long in the trenches. They are such sportsmen."
A Scottish Borderer described life in the trenches in the following extract from a letter: "To kill time we played banker with cigarette cards. We become rather like schoolboys over food. One of our mess had a small tin of biscuits sent through the post yesterday; we all crowed over it just like youngsters. One's joys are of the primitive type when, like our ancestors, we turn to live in the fields and woods again. A padre turned up yesterday, and at night (it was not safe to begin earlier) we helda service at which a great number of our men attended. We are a light-hearted lot and so are our officers. We dug out for them a kind of a subterranean mess-room where they took their meals. One fellow decorated it with a few cigarette cards and some pictures he had cut out of a French paper. Their grub was not exactly what they would get at the Cecil. A jollier and kinder lot of officers you would not meet in a day's march. One officer who was well stocked with cigarettes divided them among his men, and we were able to repay him for his kindness by digging him out from his mess-room. A number of shells tore up the turf, and the roof and sides collapsed like a castle built of cards, burying him and two others. They were in a nice pickle, but we got them out safe and sound. There are apple trees over our trench, and we have to wait till the Germans knock them down for us. You ought to see us scramble down our holes when we hear a shell coming."
The experience of ten days in the trenches was thus described: "We dig ourselves deeper and deeper into the earth, till we are completely sheltered from above, coming out now and then, when things are quiet, to cook and eat, making any moves that may be necessary under cover of darkness. Ammunition, food, and drinking water are brought in by night; the wounded are sent away to the hospital.We do not wash, we do not change our clothes; we sleep at odd intervals whenever we can get the chance, and daily we get more accustomed to our lot. It is rather an odd existence. Little holes dug beneath the parapet just big enough to sit in are our homes, with straw and perhaps a sack or two for warmth. The cold is intense at night, and those good ladies who have made us woollen caps and comforters have earned our thanks; also, we are getting used to it. The coldest moments are those when there is an alarm of a night attack, and we spring from our sleep to stand shivering behind the parapet peering over the wall to see our enemies, and firing at the flashes of their rifles. It is exciting. Every time you put as much as your little finger over a trench there is a hail of bullets."
A regiment was in trenches under fire and returning it. Two privates noticed that the French interpreter was placed at a spot where the trench was not wide enough to enable him to make proper use of his rifle. "The Frenchman isn't comfortable," said one, and both left the trench, spade in hand, knowing well that they were serving the enemy as targets, dug out the trench in front of their French comrade, and returned with unbroken calm to their own places and their rifles.
There was a humorous attempt to be homelike. A sergeant-major by the name of Kenilworth putoutside his bivouac "Kenilworth Lodge. Tradesmen's entrance at the back. Beware of the dog." The dog was picked up at Rouen.
Other shelters were named Hotel Cecil, Ritz Hotel, Billet Doux, Villa De Dug Out, etc. Soldiers called the ordinary trenches, "Little wet homes in a sewer."
Lieut. H.J.S. Shields, R.A.M.C., described his experiences in the trenches in a letter to his father. "The Germans have a battery of four guns six miles off, firing a 90lb. shell very accurately. It makes a terrible bang, a miniature earthquake, and leaves a hole 4ft. deep and 20ft. in circumference. We had about 40 within 100 yards of us this afternoon, the nearest about five yards off. Two of them have been christened 'Weeping Willy' and 'Calamity Jane.' You can hear the shell screaming towards you. With a cry of 'Here comes Jane!' all dive into their respective holes. As a matter of fact, except for two occasions, when it killed and wounded about eighty men altogether, it is less dangerous than the shrapnel, which hails once or twice an hour. Two medical officers have been killed up here, and two wounded; one had his leg blown off by 'Jane.' I make a point of entirely disregarding fire when it comes to the point of seeing to a wounded man, and pay no attention to it. I don't believe precautions, beyond the ordinary one of not exposing yourself more than can be helped, do any good, and I amrather a fatalist. After all, I always think if one is killed doing one's duty one can't help it, and it is the best way of coming to an end. I mentally repeat that to myself when I am getting plugged at. Somehow, I don't feel that God means me to get killed, though before I came out I had a conviction I should not come back alive."
Quartermaster-Sergeant A.W. Harrison, 1st Battalion King's Liverpool Regiment, wrote: "Of course we are ready to move forward at short notice, but I am afraid the first three months have played havoc with one's nerves. No description of mine could give you even a faint impression of the present war. Can you imagine one living, day in day out, for three or four weeks in a trench 6ft. deep by 3ft. wide, with such cover as one can make with a few branches and a little straw, not daring to leave it except for counter-attack, smuggling in your food and ammunition under cover of darkness, and perhaps being shelled hours at a time without seeing a single foe? Fancy not shaving nor even washing for this length of time! If you can imagine all that you will have just an inkling of what not only the private but the officer as well has to undergo. Certainly there has never been less than three to one against us. Yet, thank God! the Liverpools' line has never been broken. Compliments from our General have been showered on us, but I have seen very little mentionof us in the British Press. Our men laugh and say, 'What! Do you want jam on it?' They refer to the way some of the favourite battalions have been lauded for events which have been almost everyday occurrences with us."
A private of the Royal Scots wrote to his wife: "We were thirteen days in the trenches at one place, where we only had to stand up a minute to bring a battery of German artillery on the top of us, and for hours we had to lie still or be blown to atoms. But never mind, the sun will shine again."
A British soldier described in a letter a curious Sunday morning occurrence: "While the shells were flying we heard the most impressive music. There were strains like hymns, several hundred voices evidently taking part. We listened, missing not a bar except when a shell fell and deafened us for a moment, and then we discovered that it was a big body of Germans holding some sort of Sabbath festival at the other side of the little village, hardly two hundred yards away. One section of them was firing shells; the other was singing hymns; and we were playing nap!"
Sergeant Harlow, of the Connaught Rangers, wrote the following in a letter: "When we were in the trenches a chum of mine, Johnnie Salmon, said that we would be the better of a cup of tea. At the time there was a heavy artillery fusilade from theenemy's lines. To make the tea Salmon had to enter a deserted house close to the trenches. The water in the kettle had reached boiling point, and he was about to make the tea, when crash came a 'Jack Johnson' and whipped the roof from the house. Fortunately Salmon when he extricated himself from the debris found he was uninjured, and walking over to me he nonchalantly remarked, 'The next time you want tea, Harlow, you can go and make it yourself.' He was apparently more annoyed at having lost the tea than startled at his narrow escape."
Rifleman Edward Strong wrote to his mother: "Since I served my apprenticeship as a bootmaker I have had many strange jobs, but I don't think I've ever had anything to equal my experience last week, when I had to mend the boots of my chums in the trenches under fire. It was exciting work. Just when I was heeling one boot a shell dropped near by, and I had to run for it. When I came back the boot had disappeared, and you can bet the chap it belonged to was very cross over it. I offered to get him a new pair of boots from one of the Germans lying dead over the way, but he wouldn't be pacified. As you may imagine, there is great difficulty in getting leather for work of this kind, but we solve it by collecting the boots from the dead and cutting them up for making necessary repairs."
Not Downhearted
Frequentlyin the midst of a heavy German fire some British joker would shout, "Are we downhearted?" and this would be loudly answered in the negative by all British soldiers near him. Certainly that soldier was not downhearted who pasted "Business as Usual" on a biscuit tin, and stuck it on top of his trench for the enlightenment of the enemy.
The Hampshire Regiment, when advancing against the Germans, sang "Pop goes the Weasel" as each shell burst.
Another regiment went into battle shouting, "Early doors this way. Early doors ninepence." They were all as cheerful as if they were going to a football match. One soldier said that he got his wound because he became too excited to take cover when arguing about the relative qualities of two famous boxers.
Two soldiers in the trenches when shells werebursting round them played marbles with bullets from a shrapnel shell.
On one occasion our men, though being fired at by artillery, were kicking about a football. A German aviator who observed this sent in a report that the British forces were thoroughly disorganised and running about their post in blind alarm.
Many men remarked casually in their letters that the letters were written with bullets and shrapnel flying round. One soldier told his mother that his letter was deferred "because the Germans were trying to worry us," but added, "Do not believe half the stories about our hardships. I haven't seen or heard of a man who made complaint of anything. You can't expect a six-course dinner on active service, but we get plenty to fight on."
ATimescorrespondent told how he asked a wounded British soldier who was sitting on the roadside if his wound hurt him. He replied, "It's not that, but I'm blest if I haven't lost my pipe in that last charge."
The same correspondent saw a number of British soldiers come to Paris after a "terrible tussle" with the enemy, and said that they looked as if they had arrived from a day's holiday on Hampstead Heath, for though dusty, they were trim and smiling, and seemed to be fit for anything.
The excitable Parisians admired the way Mr.Thomas Atkins took everything as a matter of course and accommodated himself to circumstances. They shrieked with admiration when they saw two Highlanders with arms wounded dance a reel on a railway platform.
In another part of France a train full of British soldiers arrived. A Frenchman said to some of them, "Bravo! You have done splendid work, I hope that you will soon get home." "Home, sir?" replied a gunner, "why we're just getting warmed up for work. It took us a few weeks to get used to it, but now we love it and are as fit as fiddles."
"What is it like at the front?" a private of the Royal Irish Fusiliers was asked in a hospital in England. "Well, now it's hard to tell you that unless you've been there, but, faith, I'll make a good try, just to oblige you. It's very little different from what goes on at home. The day's made up of grousing and fighting, except that instead of fighting among ourselves it's the Germans we fight. Maybe the grousing's a bit different, too, from what it is in peace time. The Englishmen swear most when the meals aren't all they might be, but the Scotch and the Irish are mostly angered because the German devils won't come out and fight so's we can give them the cold iron. The English don't seem to mind that so much, so long as they have full stomachsand can keep firing away at the Germans with the big guns and the rifles."
Corporal Graham Hodson, Royal Engineers, wrote to his parents: "I am feeling awfully well, and am enjoying myself no end. Oh, it's a great life!" So little downhearted were his men that an officer, after observing them, said admiringly, "You are a lively lot of beggars. You don't seem to realise that we are at war."
One man, however, thought it well to give the inexperienced a little warning. He was a wounded soldier who was travelling in a train. At a point on the line where it ran parallel with the road he saw a brand new Territorial battalion marching up to the front, He stuck his bandaged head out of the door and yelled, "Are you dahn'earted?" The Terriers, from the colonel to the smallest drummer, shouted, "No-o-oh!" The wounded man replied, "Well, you —— soon will be when you get in those trenches."
When they were being heavily shelled a regiment shouted to their comrades in some distant trenches, "Are we downhearted?" A pause ensued, then a bloody spectre raised himself from a trench, shouted "No!" with a last breath and fell back dead.
It is a curious fact in the Army that the harder the conditions the more cheerful the men are. When everything is all right there is grumbling, but assoon as things are bad they all get as happy as sand-boys.
The "wild pulsation of strife" seems to be a "rapture" to some, and that soldier no doubt meant what he said when he wrote to his parents, "You can't believe how happy I was fighting the Germans. I felt as if I were in a football match."
A wounded soldier said that there was a fascination in battle that made him wish to be in one again. "You forget all fear, everybody is full of excitement. You hardly think of your funeral."
An officer wrote, after describing the terrible marches our troops had to make in their strategic retirement to the neighbourhood of Paris: "Our long ordeal came to a sudden end. For reasons we could not understand the Germans were retreating on our left and forsaking the tempting bait of Paris. On September 5th we got the order to advance, and instantly new life flowed into our veins. It is amazing how speedily we forget our fatigue and the mental and physical horrors we had gone through. Though their feet were sore and many of them bleeding, the men stepped back to the Marne singing, 'It's a long, long way to Tipperary,' or the new version, 'It's a wrong, wrong way to tickle Mary.'"
Sir Douglas Haig, the General who led so wellin the retreat, had good reason for saying, "We have had hardish times, but nothing in our history has surpassed the fine soldierly qualities displayed by the troops."
Play and Work
Sowell did our soldiers keep up their spirits that they were always ready for a little play even when engaged in hard work and fighting. Here is an instance given by a Coldstream Guardsman: "We were down to the last cigarette in a box that had done the company for a week. There was a fight to get it, but the sergeant-major said we would have to shoot for it like the King's Prize at Bisley. It was to go to the man hitting most Germans in fifty shots. A corporal was sent up a tree to signal hits and misses as best he could. Half the company entered, and the prize was won by a chap who had twenty-three hits. The runner-up had twenty-two, and as a sort of consolation prize he was allowed to sit near while the winner smoked the cigarette. He said being near the smoke was better than nothing."
Seven men of the Worcestershire Regiment were able to do a little business one day when they were told they could go for a stroll. They encountereda party of Germans, and captured them all without firing a shot. It was so simple. "We just covered them with our rifles and they surrendered."
Few of us take our easy work in time of peace in the playful spirit which was shown by our soldiers in the trying experiences of the trenches. This is what an officer wrote: "For three weeks we remained near the Aisne, east of Soissons, taking our turn in the trenches in shifts of four days and nights with two days' rest south of the river. We made the most wonderful trenches. The men called them the rabbit warren and themselves rabbits, and when the big guns gave ten seconds' warning they cried out, 'Here comes the gamekeeper,' and darted into their holes."
A soldier invalided home told of this mixture of play with work, or of work with play. "I got my wound in a fight that you will never hear of in official despatches, because it was a little affair of our own. It was what you might call a night attack. We had some leisure in our position along the Aisne, and there was a little village near our lines where we used to go for a bit of a lark. One night, coming back—there were about ten of us—we were surprised to find a light in an empty farmhouse, and were still more surprised to find sounds of revelry coming out through the window. We peeped in, and there were about fifty Germansdrinking and eating and smoking, and generally trying to look as if they were having a jolly old time. A dare-devil of an Irishman suggested that we ought to give the Germans a little surprise, and we were all in with him. Doing our best to look fierce and create the impression that we had at least a brigade behind us, we flung open the door without any ceremony. Our first rush was for the passage, where most of the Germans had stacked their rifles, and from there we were able to cover the largest party in any one room. They were so taken aback that they made very little resistance. The only chap who showed any fight was a big fellow, who had good reason to fear us, for he had escaped the day before after being arrested as a spy. He whipped out a revolver, and some of his chums drew swords, but we fired into them, and they threw up their hands, after one had sent a revolver bullet through my arm. We fastened them up securely, collected all the smokes and grub they had not touched, and marched them off to the camp."
A soldier wrote: "One day last week we were on the move, and were about as hungry as men could be, when we came on a party of Uhlans just about to sit down to a dinner, which had been prepared for them at a big house. They looked as if they had had too much of a good time lately, and wantedthinning down, so we took them prisoners, and let them watch us enjoying their dinner. They didn't like it at all, and one of them muttered something about an English pig. The baby of the troop asked him outside to settle it with the fists, but he wasn't having it. After the best dinner I've had in my life we went round to where the Uhlans had commandeered the supplies, and offered to pay, but the people were so pleased that we had got the food instead of the Germans that they wouldn't hear of payment."
On another occasion Uhlans were driven out of their "supper room" by a small body of our cavalry. They left a finely-cooked repast of beefsteaks, onions and fried potatoes all ready and done to a turn, with about fifty bottles of Pilsener lager beer, which was an acceptable relish.
It was as good as a play when some of our soldiers were looking at and wishing for walnuts, and a German shell came and knocked them off the tree for them.
On another occasion when a German shell had set some wood on fire they cooked their food on the opportune flame.
A bombardier, R.F.A., wrote: "We were unable to sleep for the pouring rain, and sat at a big camp fire with hot tea and rum. The boys asked me to sing 'Annie Laurie,' and I was never in bettervoice. When I finished there were officers, and even the staff officers, who had come over the field in the rain to join in. They were nearly all Scotch, and 'Annie Laurie,' after all, is to a Scot what the 'Marseillaise' is to a Frenchman. One fellow was singing 'Boiled Beef and Carrots,' when a bullet came and knocked his cap off. An officer nearly died of laughing."
"The labour that delights us physics pain," as the corporal of the Garrison Artillery found, who wrote of his work: "There is something terribly fascinating about this sort of thing, and every day brings some new excitement and experience. I feel more the hardened old veteran each day, and don't care a straw where they send us. I may not tell you where we are, but I am proud to say we have seen as much sport as most of them. We are being looked after splendidly. Our officers are all kindness and consideration. The major is a typical warrior, and a thorough sport (as you well know). We don't care where he leads us, we are so fond of him."
When at one place the German searchlights were turned on the British lines and an artillery fusillade began, a man of the Middlesex Regiment shouted to his comrade, "I say, Bill, it's just like a play an' us in the limelight." The enemy had not got the range accurately, and so little was the effect of the fire that some of our men laughed loudly and heldup their caps on the end of their rifles to give the German gunners "a bit of encouragement."
Rifleman Horace Copley, 1st Battalion King's Royal Rifles, wrote: "Such a good joke! The Germans have just fired over forty shells at what they think is a line of trenches. There is a biscuit tin flashing in the sun, and they think it is a heliograph. Some joker has fixed the tin, and they fired at it all day yesterday, exploding thousands of pounds' worth of big shells. But the tin is still flashing. Ha, ha!"
If on this occasion the failure of the Germans caused amusement, on another occasion the success of our gunners (so hideous is war) did the same. "The officer in charge," said a looker-on, "gave the order to fire to the gunners, and no sooner was the order given than it was carried out. What made me laugh was every now and then the officer would say, 'There are some Germans over there,' and the reply from the gunner was, 'All right, sir, I'll soon have them down,'; then he started firing the gun, and had them down in a few seconds."
Even out of the fighting at Mons, Bandsman Wall, and others of the Connaught Rangers, got all the fun of a fair. "We had nothing to do but shoot the Germans as they came up, just like knocking dolls down at the fair ground. Some of our men are beginning to fancy themselves as marksmen.If they don't hit every time they think they ought to see a doctor about it."
So playfully did our soldiers take their work that a man had a football tied to him as he marched to battle.
Another could not help writing almost all his letter home in football terms: "The great match for the European Cup is still being played out, and I daresay there's a record gate, though you can't see the spectators from the field. That's one of the rules of the game when this match is on. In spite of all their swank the Germans haven't scored a goal yet, and they're simply kicking at the ball any way in their blind rage at not being able to score. Our team is about as fit as you could have them, and they're all good men, though some of them are amateurs and the Germans are all 'pros.' The German forwards are a rotten pack. They have no dash worth talking about, and they come up the field as though they were going to the funeral of their nearest and dearest. When they are charged they nearly always fall away on to their backs, and their goalkeeping's about the rottenest thing you ever set eyes on. I wouldn't give a brass farthing for their chances of lifting the Cup, and if you have any brass to spare you can put it on the Franco-British team, who are scoring goals so fast that we haven't time to stop and count them. TheKaiser makes a rotten captain for any team, and it's little wonder they are losing. Most of our side would like to tell him what they think of him and his team."
Mr. Harold Ashton, ofThe Daily News and Leader, showed to a Horse Artillery gunner a copy of that paper. "Where's the sporting news?" asked the artilleryman as he glanced over the pages. "Shot away in the war," replied Mr. Ashton. "What!" exclaimed Tommy, "not a line about the Arsenal? Well, I'm blowed! Thisisa war!"
One day men of the Lincoln Regiment had a game of football, and French soldiers looked on. During the game a German aeroplane came over and dropped a few bombs, but no one was injured. The game was stopped and there was a rush for the rifles. They fired, but did not succeed in winging the aeroplane, and a French machine gun was brought into action. It finished the aeroplane and the game was continued. The Frenchmen cheered and said, "You English are very misunderstandable. Fancy playing football when German bombs are dropping from the skies!"
The difficulty is, however, as one football devotee explained, that "you can never count on getting your team together. Only the other day I was talking to four of our best men when bang camea big shell, and when I picked myself up I couldn't see a trace of them—blown to atoms like that."
Football is difficult in such circumstances, but think of the spirit which enables the men to play it at all!
The following amused those in the trenches who heard it. Some of our gunners having lost their way at night wandered about until they were ready to drop with fatigue. Then in the darkness they ran into a detachment of cavalry posted near a wood. They could not make out the colour of their uniform and feared that they were Germans. Their relief was great when one of the cavalry shouted out, "Where the hell do you think you are going to?" "I do not approve of swear words," said the gunner who related the adventure, "but I was more than glad to hear one then. It made us know that we were with friends."