"Yarns" like this are spun by those who have to watch or who have nothing to do but wait and see. There is always a funny man to raise a laugh, and not infrequently rival jesters enter into competition. There are rhymesters, too, and they try to put into crude verse and apply to a well-known air something that has happened on the previous day. If a private has lost the photograph of the girl he left behind him, he cannot get consolation from his best friend, for the whole company would hear of it and sing about it.
Sometimes their work led the troops to a little bit of sport. "We billeted for two days at a place two days' march from Belgium and had a pretty good time bathing and—what was most amusing—fishing in a small pond for 'tiddlers.' I and a chum went to a woman at a house and, making her understand the best way we could, begged some cotton and a couple of pins. We had a couple of hours fishing and captured quite two dozen, although before long lots of our chaps caught the complaint and did the same as we did, causing much amusement. I suppose that French woman had to buy a new stock of cotton, but she was a good sort and was as much amused as the soldiers."
War as a Game
Ithas been said that war is a game at which kings would not play if their subjects were wise, and the German nation was certainly not wise when it allowed its Emperor to make war against the world. Germans, however, do not think of war as a game at all, but as a most serious, even moral thing, and they are indignant with our soldiers for applying to its grim experiences the common terms of sport, and especially of football.
It is this sporting spirit of our soldiers that enables them to fight gamely and to die gamely. Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) said of the House of Commons that it was "dull with some great moments." The same may be said of war, and our men forgive its dangers and dullness for the sake of its great moments.
In one engagement the Royal Highlanders jumped out of the trenches and charged "as if they were kicking off in a Cup-tie final." They commencedto shout, "On the ball, Highlanders!" and "Mark your men!" They continued yelling to one another until they had driven the Germans back. Who can say that "Mark your men!" did not have a stimulating effect upon the Highlanders?
"Dodging shells and bullets," wrote Sapper Anderson, R.E., "is far more exciting than dodging footballers."
A subaltern wrote: "I adore war. It is like a big picnic; I have never been so well or so happy. We are enjoying all the benefits of a Continental holiday. It has done me a world of good coming out here."
A private of the 3rd Worcester Regiment wrote: "In the trenches the British are excelling themselves as men of stamina, for, believe me, it is killing work; perfect murder, in fact. Yet they hardly ever complain. Six men and an officer had to go into hospital with frostbite, and my feet have not got the circulation back yet. Never mind, we must keep up our reputation as British soldiers, and stick it. The snow has gone again, and it is up to your neck in mud in the trenches. I have had one or two pack ponies to look after, but I have thrown up the job, as it was too tame. I prefer being with the company in the firing line, as I felt lost being with the transport and no shells flying over it. It makes you long for your chums after being withthem all the time. We play football with German helmets, which are all over the place."
A young officer who had been fighting ever since the beginning of the war was ordered a month's leave for the sake of his health. "I've got a month," he said to a correspondent, "but I rather fancy I shall be back in a week. It's fine to be at home again—and—and—all that. But when you've once been in the thick of the game it holds you like a magnet. I'm only a few miles away from the hot stuff now, but I am already beginning to feel the pull of that magnet. I'm off to bed. Funny sensation going upstairs! We've been diving into bed for weeks and weeks—rabbit holes for cots and straw (if you are lucky) for counterpanes, and the only chambermaids we've had to knock us up in the morning have been the 12 lb. shells. Good-night!"
Some of our men were defending a café at the battle of Mons. In the café there was an automatic piano, and when they first saw the enemy coming one soldier said to another: "Put a penny in the slot. Jack, and give them some music to dance to." So every time there was a German attack after that the "band" struck up. They fought, eye-witnesses declared, as though it was a new and delightful kind of game they had discovered.
Lieutenant C.A.E. Chudleigh, who is serving with the Indian Force, says in a letter: "One usuallyspends most of one's slack hours in terrific efforts to dig oneself out of several layers of grime, and it is a job, too, with nothing but scrubbing soap and cold water out of a ditch. It sounds awful to you I expect, but it isn't really as bad as it sounds. For one thing we are getting so used to it, and if approached in the true holiday spirit it really becomes quite a sort of picnic. No rotting! I really have thoroughly enjoyed the last few weeks since we have been here. I don't think I have had so many jolly good laughs in my life. It is a funny thing that, on looking back, I think I have spent most of my life in search of excitements and interesting scenes and people, and now I have found them in profusion. It is as good as a cinematograph."
Speaking of dispatch-riding in the war, a motor-cyclist said to a reporter, "I've never really lived till I came to the war. We have to rough it at times, but the fun we have is simply gorgeous. Yesterday a shell (he laughed much when he said this) came down about fifty yards from me, but I got through with my dispatches without a scratch. This is splendid work for the nut who wants an outlet for his high spirits."
And our Indian troops get equal enjoyment from the game. A dusky warrior being asked how he liked being in action replied, "Sahib, all wars are beautiful, but this one is heavenly."
At the beginning of winter at the front, games were arranged for leisure days and evenings. There were to be inter-trench and inter-army football matches. A Battle Hunt Club was formed, and a pack of foxhounds brought over from England. A phonograph company sent songs, which, with the aid of field telephones, could be "turned on" to any trench at any time.
We suspect that it is chiefly young soldiers and new arrivals at the front who think of war as a game. The game must seem to be played out when winter days have to be passed in cold wet trenches, when frost bites, when wounds are inflicted, when food and other supplies are delayed. Many poor soldiers must echo the sentiment of one of their number who wrote at the end of a letter, "I must admit that I shall not be sorry when peace comes. A little of the game of war goes a long way. At first it is interesting, but the horror and foolishness of it I shall never get over."
The following extract from a letter of a young officer to his parents suggests that the pleasures of war, depending as they do on excitement, are, to say the least, fleeting. "People at home, and even other corps out here, do not realize what the infantry have to go through. Such things as many nights out in the open, rain or no rain, long marches over roads which have almost become bogs, perhaps nofood all day, not because the A.S. Corps don't bring it up, but because you have a lot too much to do to eat it, and when you haven't got anything to do, you are too exhausted to eat it.... We manage to keep our spirits up and are quite cheery; one feels very down when one loses a pal, but we feel it is impossible to turn aside the wheels of fate. So we leave them to their rest behind us, forget about them and cheer up."
Another officer wrote: "If there is such a thing as hell on earth this must surely be it. I have been in the firing-line for four days; in the trenches for three, and just behind in support to-day, which isn't much better. They shell us nearly all day, and you have to creep into the farthest corner of the trench expecting the infernal things to burst on you. At present we are holding back thousands compared to our hundreds. They attacked yesterday and to-day in masses, but were driven back. I haven't washed or had my boots off since I got here, and am mud almost from head to foot, including hair."
The Courage that Bears
Thecourage that bears and the courage that dares are really one and the same.
At a certain period of the night it became exceedingly important that the enemy should have no indication of the position of a detachment of British infantry which had been moved up towards him. Unhappily a stray shot shattered an arm of one of our men. In his agony the poor fellow allowed a cry to escape him. Next moment, seizing a piece of turf with his uninjured hand he thrust it into his mouth, where he held it in position until he was able to crawl back through the lines.
Not less of the courage that bears was shown by Corporal Lancaster, of the Coldstream Guards. He received an agonising wound, but was warned by his comrades that if he groaned he would disclose their position to the Germans. He endured in silence for six hours and then died.
If patience is a form of courage, those men were very brave who went through the days and nights ofmarching that had to be done during the retreat after the battle of Mons. "We were told if we fell out it was at our own risk as we would be captured by the advancing Germans. My feet were bleeding, the blood coming through the laceholes of my boots." Even when they were marching men fell asleep. The Army Service Corps had, at times, to work twenty-two hours out of twenty-four to get food up to the men.
A Royal Medical Corps man who worked on hospital trains wrote: "Some of the wounds are terrible, but the patients are very plucky. I asked in one carriage how they were. The reply, though not a man could move, was, 'We're all right, chum, our wounds are going on fine.' A few had lain where they fell on wet ground for four days, as they could not be taken away because of artillery fire. A man whose nose had been hit said that it always had been too big. A chap who had been wounded twenty-five times, said to a chum when the train was starting, 'Buck up, Jack, I'll meet you in Berlin for Christmas dinner.'"
Soldiers who have got bad wounds often speak of them as "mere scratches." They are plucky and do not want to annoy other people. If indeed they groaned and whimpered they would be told by their comrades to "shut up" and "make less row." A friend of the writer who is a Chaplain tothe Forces, speaking of the wounded after a battle, wrote: "But, oh, the patient endurance of these men. I would not have conceived it possible that they should have borne what they did bear so absolutely without complaint—nay, not only without complaint or murmuring, but with an unaffected gratefulness for not being worse, and for having escaped at all. They get their wounds dressed, take chloroform, give consent to have their limbs amputated just as if they were going to have their hair cut."
"Give them a cigarette and let them grip the operating table, and they will stick anything until they practically collapse," wrote Corporal Stewart, R.A.M.C., in a letter from the front referring to the British wounded.
A private of the Royal Munster Fusiliers did not mind a shrapnel wound in his left arm, but deeply repined that it had taken off a tattooed butterfly, which had long been his pride and joy. He consoled himself with the elaborate tattoos on the other arm—"But the loike of that butterfly I shall niver see agin," was his sad reflection.
"What gets over me," a soldier who had been shot in the foot remarked, "is how it ain't done more damage to my boot!"
And wounded soldiers are most grateful for any attention that is shown to them. An Irishman who was brought into a hospital a mere wreck,after being washed, shaved and put between sheets told his nurse that he could not "sleep for comfort," and then asked, "How can I thank you enough for what you have done for me? There's no use praying for you, for there is a place in Heaven reserved for the likes of you."
Of a nurse in a French hospital, which was a church, a British soldier wrote: "If ever anyone deserved a front seat in Heaven she did. God bless her! She has the prayers and all the love the remnants of the Fourth Division can give her."
How Ruskin would have appreciated the gratitude of a man of the Lancashire Fusiliers of whom a sergeant of the 5th Lancers wrote: "He had two ghastly wounds in his breast, and I thought he was booked through. He was quietly reading a little edition of Ruskin's 'Crown of Wild Olive,' and seemed to be enjoying it immensely. As I chatted with him for a few minutes he told me that this little book had been his companion all through, and that when he died he wanted it to be buried with him. His end came next day, and we buried the book with him."
War is not always exciting, but frequently monotonous, tedious and painful. All this is taken as in the day's work. "Sore feet are the great trouble, most of us being a bit lame. We alsoget sore hips from sleeping and lying so much on the ground.... But don't imagine there are funkers. The first time we were in action most of us were a bit trembly, but soon the nerves got in hand, and our officers hadn't much use for their 'Steady, boys.' What gets at you is not being able to come to close quarters and fight man to man. As a fact, we see very little of the enemy, but blaze away at the given range and trust to Providence. For that matter we see very little of our own fellows, and only know by the ambulance men passing through our lines what regiments are near us. For hours we stick on one spot, and see nothing but smoke, and something like a football crowd swaying half a mile off. Our grub department works well, as we have not moved very rapidly, but it sometimes happens that outlying companies, and even regiments, lose touch of their kitchens for a day or even more. There has been some trouble caused by one lot collaring the rations meant for another, but that is bound to happen, even on manœuvres. It is all in a lifetime. Keep smiling. That's the way to win the game."
One of the 3rd Hussars wrote: "The work out here is very stiff; in fact, the Shop Hours Act doesn't come anywhere near it. We go out early in the morning and about the following week we think of coming in for a sleep. You would besurprised if you were to see how cheerful all our troops are."
A soldier wrote to his wife: "After what I have gone through if I ever get home from the war I shall never grumble at meals or care where I sleep." Surely the thought of the hardships and wounds which our soldiers bore so bravely should cure our "nerves" and give us a little of their courage to bear.
Writing from an ambulance, Percy Higgins, of the Royal Medical Corps, said: "It is surprising to me that anybody should ever complain of ordinary aches and pains when you see men here with legs and parts of their bodies plastered up in plaster of paris, quietly reading and telling you they feel grand."
In a Military Hospital
Whenthere is war a military hospital is a microcosm of its miseries, but the heroism of our soldiers greatly mitigates them. On the field of battle soldiers show the courage that dares, and when they are brought into hospital it is found that they have also the courage that bears.
"It's a treat," wrote a R.A.M.C. man, "to see the 'Tommies' when their wounds are being dressed. You may ask them twenty times if they are feeling pain, and they will say 'No,' or 'Only a trifle,' until at last they collapse."
The self-forgetfulness of some of the wounded is sublime. Writing of patients who had passed through No. 14 Clearing Hospital 5th Division, in France, Dr. Ludwig Tasker said: "We had one poor fellow whose tongue was actually on his neck, as the result of having had his left jaw blown off. Of course, he could not speak, and when, at a sign from him, I gave him a sheet of paper, all he wrote on it was that his captain was worthy of the Victoria Cross."
When Private H.S. Funnell, of the 2nd Sussex Regiment, died in a French Military Hospital, a nurse wrote this to his wife: "Your husband was apparently thinking about the battle a good deal, for quite at the last he called out: 'Come on, boys, at 'em again. I don't mind if they are six or a hundred to one. Last fight. I'm done. Good-bye, lads. The good old Sussex."
A medical man serving with the R.A.M.C. at the front, in a letter to a friend, said: "Our Tommy is a grand fellow. There was one—a Notts and Derby man—brought in last night. He was peppered all over, and I said to him as he lay on the table, 'What happened to you?' and he said, 'I got three damned coal-boxes'—the name we give to the big Black Maria German Shells. I said to him, 'Why did you try to stop three?' and he said, 'I couldn't get out of the way.' We dressed him in the head, the back, the right shoulder and the buttock, mostly nasty wounds. Then I said, 'Are you hit anywhere else?' and he said, 'Well, I think there are two or three on my right leg, but they don't matter. Will you give me a cigarette?' I gave him one, and he said, 'I'm used to this. I'm a collier, and I've been twice in pit accidents, but I'd sooner go through those than run up against another coal-box.'"
To have been wounded in eleven places is theremarkable record of Private E. Johnson, of the Yorkshire Light Infantry, now in the Duchess of Westminster's Hospital at La Toquet. He tells his wife in a letter that he has pains in the head that nearly make him mad; but forgetting himself and thinking of his children he continues: "It nearly breaks my heart to think I cannot send little Violet and Bessie and Lillie something for Christmas; but never mind, let us hope we shall live for another Christmas."
A Highlander who had been maimed for life was asked afterwards in Hospital if he regretted becoming a soldier. He replied, "No, because I've had a good home and a man with a good home should fight for it."
An English artilleryman, who before the war was a professional footballer in the North of England, died in hospital. He had previously undergone amputation of both legs. Up to the end he chatted with two visitors who had come to solace his last moments. The dying man, who in his time had been a great centre forward, told them he did not fancy living with his two legs off while all the other "boys" were out playing, but declared he would not have missed the excitement of the last battle for anything. Refusing grapes and chocolate, he took a cigarette and said: "Have you any newspapers with you? I should like to glance over the football news before I pass out."
There is an irrepressible Welsh Fusilier at the Stanley Hospital, Liverpool, who is known as "the Joker of the Regiment." He has three bad bullet wounds, and yet he is as cheerful as a lion comique, and keeps his fellows as cheerful as children at a circus.
After telling his mother in a letter that he was "in dock for repairs," a soldier continued: "This leaves me with a smile on my face, only I'll say good-bye, lest we should never meet again."
Rifleman P. King, 2nd Battalion King's Royal Rifles, wrote from Portsmouth Hospital: "Since I have been home I have had a leg amputated 4 inches below the knee, so now one tin of blacking will last twice as long, as I shall only have one boot to clean!"
So it is that the brave spirit of our soldiers enables them to joke even at serious wounds. A hand of a Royal Irish Rifleman was shot off at the battle of Mons. For some time after being admitted to hospital he was very despondent about his future. How could he earn his living? One day, however, he broke out with a laugh. "If all else fails. I'll get a job as a shorthand writer."
Another Highlander, with arm terribly shattered by a shell, said: "I will be first-rate for opening taxi doors in the Strand; lucky it was my left arm."
A soldier told a reporter this about a wounded Highlander. When brought to hospital he began to swear, and those who had picked him up at great risk told him that this was a strange sort of gratitude to men who had most likely saved his life. "Maybe you have, and maybe you haven't saved my life," he said in his dogged, dour way. "A'm no saying onnything aboot that; but what A want to hear is what did ye dae wi' me wee cap. It's loast, it is, an' A'll hae tee pay for anither oot o' me ain pocket."
At all times a good soldier dislikes to go to hospital; but especially so on active service. He wants to do all he can for his country and he dreads to be suspected of "skrimshanking." The reluctance of Colonel Loring, who commanded the second Battalion of the Royal Warwickshires, to go to hospital caused his death, which was a great loss to the Army. Wounded in a foot by a shrapnel bullet he refused to go to hospital, had his foot bound up in a puttee when unable to wear a boot and led his men on horseback. This made him a conspicuous mark for sharpshooters, and after two chargers had been killed under him he was himself shot dead.
Great courage is shown by orderlies and ambulance men connected with a military hospital. There is the danger of catching infectious diseases and thedanger of collecting the wounded during and after a battle. For ambulance men there is no excitement, or the stimulus of "hitting back;" yet they often get hit themselves.
Ready to Return
I readthis in the letter of an Army Service man printed inThe Evening News. "There was a Guardsman in hospital in France with me who had eight bullets in him, besides three ugly bayonet wounds. He had the constitution of a horse, and after he had his 'rattles,' as he called the bullets, taken out he swore that he would be back before Christmas to square accounts with the Germans. All he wanted was to return to the fighting."
"He lies upon his bed of pain.Despite of nurses deft and kindHe is unhappy; it is plainThat something weighs upon his mind.Ask him his dearest wish to name,And, smiling even on the rack,He tells, without a trace of shame,How he is anxious to get back."
In a half humorous way our soldiers took their wounds. They knew from experience, as a distinguished officer once said to me, that a battlefield is a disagreeable place, but keen soldiers that they were, they thought that there was one thing worse than a battle, and that was not to be in one. Many soldiers were quite indignant at being sent home for what they called "scratches that will heal."
A sergeant was anxious to return to the war because he thought that he ought not to have been sent away from it. He was hit by five bullets, but why for this trifling matter should his colonel have ordered him out of the firing line and into an ambulance?
Men make light of wounds in arms, hands and feet. "They have just earned us a little rest. We shall soon go back to the trenches again."
A correspondent thus wrote of a second Lieutenant of the Royal Scots: "Only this morning he drew me a picture of war and its effect upon the novice. 'Imagine your chaps groaning all around you, your best pal shot through the heart at your feet; imagine the shrapnel screaming above—I was knocked down and stunned four times in a few minutes by shells exploding—imagine houses burning, women shrieking, and all about the place the mangled bodies of men and horses, and blood, blood, blood. I suppose I'm chicken-hearted, but I only left school last year.'
"'And your wound?' 'Oh, it's not much;still, I'm going home this afternoon. Never want to see any more war.'
"Two hours later I saw him leap into a train labelled ——. 'Where are you off to?' I asked. 'Back to the front. Can't bear the idea of my regiment being there and me loafing about some health resort.'"
A private of the Royal Sussex Regiment wrote this from a hospital in France: "My hand is very painful, but it will soon get better, I hope, as they want us back in the firing line, and every man away means fifty Germans kept alive and kicking."
Rifleman G. Harper wrote to his brother from a hospital at Paignton: "A bullet went through the left side of my face, struck my teeth, turned downwards, and just missed the main artery. The surgeon says I am one in a thousand to be alive, so it is better to be born lucky than rich. I don't think they will let me go out there after this, but if I get a chance I am off after their blood again."
A medical officer said to an interviewer, "I am glad to have been through the hottest part of the battle of the Aisne, and at the hottest corner, and only hope to get back in time to see the aftermath. The attitude of the wounded is wonderful, for all those who are not seriously hurt do nothing but talk about getting well and having another go at 'those —— Germans.'"
After our King had visited in an hospital soldiers sent back from the war the spirit of all the wounded was voiced by a man who, describing his impression of the King's visit, said, "He's real human, that's what he is, and I, for one, shall be glad to go back and fight for him again."
"So shall I," came in chorus from every bed in the ward.
A corporal of the Coldstream Guards wrote: "If you look over the official lists of casualties you will see that I was 'killed in action,' so, strictly speaking, I ought not to tell you anything. I am looking forward to getting back to the firing line, and hope the Germans will find me a lively corpse."
For bringing fifty-nine men out of action when all the officers and non-commissioned officers were killed or wounded, T. Burns, of the Middlesex Regiment, was made a King's Corporal. At the battle of Mons a bit of shell hit him between his eyes and he got a bullet through a thigh and one through a wrist. Even this was not enough of it. "I am going out again as soon as I am well. I am itching for sweet revenge, or another coconut shie. 'All you knock down you have.' What a game!"
The Morning Postcorrespondent wrote: "I saw a colonel yesterday who has been invalided three times. He had seven bullet wounds, and had losttwo toes by a shell. The last time he was wounded, though he lay exposed to a murderous fire, he ordered away all rash attempts of his men to succour him. When his last wounds were healed in an hospital in the South of France he was so anxious to return to duty at the front that the only leave he asked for was twenty-four hours in Paris to visit his wife. Not that the front is exactly pleasant, but because being away from it is just impossible."
A newspaper correspondent lately wrote that he saw a train full of officers and soldiers leaving London to go back after a few days' leave to their "funk holes" at the front. "They were," he wrote, "as cheerful as boys off to the seaside for a holiday."
Probably, however, some of our soldiers are not now as ready to return to the war as they were when they knew less about it. They have no desire again to "wade knee deep through blood." A wounded man who returned lately to England said when he found himself in a comfortable hospital bed, "I could do with a rest here until they send for me to make me Kaiser."
One of the Coldstream Guards, who had been invalided home, was asked if he was keen to return. He replied, "No, I am not a liar or a lunatic, and only a liar or a madman would say that he was anxious to return to hell. Still, I'll go if they want me with a good heart."
When a man has done his "bit" in the war he is sometimes unselfish enough to wish to give some one else a chance. Once bitten twice shy; turn about is fair play.
"Send out the Army and Navy,Send out the rank and file,(Have a banana!)Send out the brave Territorials,They easily can run a mile.(I don't think!)Send out the boys' and the girls' brigade,They will keep old England free:Send out my mother, my sister, and my brother,But for goodness' sake don't send me."
Many soldiers who had retired from the Army were ready to return to it. It does them credit that they should in this way desire to help their country. One of these heroic volunteers is Piper Findlater. It will be remembered that he gained the V.C. at Dargai in October, 1897, when he continued playing "The Cock o' the North" after being wounded.
Fashions at the Front
Sleepingout in the open in all weathers is rough on clothes, and our soldiers had to treat themselves to new suits whenever they could pick them up. A Highlander was rigged out in the boots of a Belgian infantryman killed at Mons, the red trousers of a Frenchman, the khaki tunic of a Guardsman, and the Glengarry cap of his own corps. When he wanted to look particularly smart he wore a German cavalryman's cloak.
An Irish soldier complained that the trousers he had got from a dead man were tighter than his skin. "I can sit down in my skin, but I can't sit down in them trousers." Another said that he had been almost equally unfortunate. His nether garments were so short that they made him "look like a blooming boy scout." A trooper is reported to have said that he did not get a pair of Uhlans' boots to fit him until he had "knocked out six of the blighters."
The following is an extract from the letter of an officer in the Army Veterinary Corps:
"The British soldier has done all right. He is a most curious creature. When he goes to war he gives away most of his badges and all distinguishing marks to the nearest girl, loses his hat and replaces it with a chauffeur's cap or a felt hat, and by not washing or shaving for a week at a time makes himself look like a tramp or a gipsy, and as unlike a soldier as can be. He then—without the slightest warning—proceeds to show that he is the finest fighting man in the world."
The dress worn in the trenches makes us think of Robinson Crusoe. The "Trench Kit" consists of a short greatcoat of goatskin, with the hair outside, woolly Balaclava caps, and sandbags filled with straw for the legs and feet.
Rifleman Roberts wrote to his wife: "We have all got nice fur coats—'Teddy Bears' we call them—and they are all right, I can tell you. I have just got a complete change of new underclothing, all swansdown, and nice thick gloves and a scarf."
The Sergeant-major of the 1st Leicestershire Regiment said in a letter: "A barber would do a roaring trade here, no one having shaved for weeks. Beards vary according to the age of the individual. Mine, for instance, is something to gaze on and remember. They are not by any means what the writer of a lady's novelette would describe as a perfect dream."
In a letter to his mother an officer wrote: "I haven't washed for six days at all, as we have only one water-bottle each day for drink and all, and I don't know how long it is since I have had a bath. To-day I had my hair cut; you would faint if you could see it. It was done by one of the battery cooks with a pair of very blunt, loose scissors, and an enormous comb with all the teeth split."
A German bullet once did a little hair-cutting. It took the cap of a soldier off his head and made a groove in his hair just like a barber's parting. All thought that the German who fired the shot was a London hairdresser.
A private of the 4th Middlesex Regiment found two pieces of scented soap in a German haversack, and got greatly chaffed for using scented soap on active service. The luxury of a bath was indulged in by a company of Berkshires at one encampment. Forty wine barrels nearly full of water were discovered, and the thirsty men were about to drink it when their officer stopped them. "Well," said one, "if it's not good enough to drink it'll do to wash in," and with one accord they stripped and jumped into the barrels!
This was told of "wee Hecky MacAlister" by Private T. McDougall, of the Highland Light Infantry. Hecky went into a burn for a swim, and suddenly found the attentions of the Germans weredirected to him. "You know what a fine mark he is with his red head," says the writer to his correspondent, "and so they just hailed bullets at him." Hecky, however, "dooked and dooked," and emerged from his bath happy but breathless.
A sergeant wrote: "I happened to find a bit of looking-glass. It made a rare bit of fun. As it was passed from comrade to comrade we said, 'Have a last look at yourself, my boy, and bid yourself good-bye.' The laugh went round; then 'Advance!' and we were all at it again."
"One man of the Life Guards was very particular about his appearance (says Trooper Walter Dale, now at Newcastle-upon-Tyne), and even in war-time always carried a little hand mirror about in order to take occasional peeps at himself to see that all was right. I happened to pass him on the field when he had been badly wounded. There he lay, with the glass in his hand, curling his moustache. I suppose he was anxious that when death found him he should be a credit to a smart regiment. I had to pass on that time, but the next journey we intended to take him to hospital. It was too late. He was dead, and his glass was still clutched in his hand. His 'quiff' had been curled till it was a beauty."
ATimescorrespondent wrote: "Within sight of the spot where these words are being penned the chauffeur of the General Staff motor-car is completinghis morning toilet in the open. After washing hands and face in a saucepan, minus the handle, which is balanced on an empty petrol can, he carefully brushes his hair with an old nailbrush, using the window of the car in which he has slept as a looking-glass."
Another man had his toilet completed in a French hospital without any trouble to himself. After being sent to England because of a wound in his left thigh he told a friend that his finger nails had been manicured. "'Shocking fingers,' the French nurse said, 'for a young man to go about with,' so she brought a bowl of soapy water and a box of tools and manicured (that is what she called it) my finger nails."
A corporal of the Coldstream Guards wrote:
"There was a chap of the Grenadier Guards who was always mighty particular about his appearance, and persisted in wearing a tie all the time, whereas most of us reduced our needs to the simplest possible. One day, under heavy rifle fire, he was seen to be in a frightful fluster. 'Are you hit?' he was asked. 'No,' he said. 'What is it, then?'
"'This —— tie is not straight,' he replied, and proceeded to adjust it."
A motor-cycle despatch-rider wrote: "I have just had a hot bath and shave, and complete change of underclothing; the shock may kill me, but it is a glorious feeling, and I am glad to say I have by theuse of iodoform kept free from vermin, which so many fellows suffer from out here."
"I hung my shirt out all night to dry on a tree," writes Lance-Corporal Laird, Royal Army Medical Corps. "At daylight I found that a piece of shell had taken the elbow of it. Good job I wasn't in it."
Some of the shirts wanted washing badly. Seeing a man busily examining his shirt, an officer asked him had he caught many. "Yes, sir," was the reply, "I think there's a new draft come in."
Fashion demanded a clean shirt when an Army Service Corps man went to a party. "We stayed at —— four days. The inhabitants were delighted to see us as they felt much safer. Little did they dream of what was in store for them later on. A lady and a gentleman gave me and my two mates an invitation to tea. They came down the lines to fetch us. We made ourselves up as best we could under the circumstances. I put on a clean shirt, washed, shaved, and had a regular brush-up. We arrived at the house, or rather mansion, and were quite out of place, as we thought, walking on polished tiles in the passage, with our big heavy boots. It was a perfect slide. We took a seat by a big round table, had wine, cakes, tea, cigars and cigarettes. To our surprise, this lady's father was mayor of ——. The lady, whose husband was with his regiment abouteleven miles away, sang us two songs in English, 'The Holy City' and 'Killarney.' It was a perfect treat to have one's legs under a table to drink from cups and saucers. Next day we thought it was a dream."
Graphic Descriptions
Manythings surprised our soldiers on coming to France, and they described them with much humour. Speaking of the French soldiers a sergeant remarked: "Aren't their trousers baggy? They can march all the same, though. D'you know what they're paid? They get a halfpenny a day, and they're paid every five days in a crossed cheque. Well, they seem glad to see us, don't they, sir? As soon as ever I pull up they gather round and want to shake my hand. It's as bad as bein' a parliamentary candidate."
This is what a soldier said of the American Ambulance at Neuilly, where he spent four weeks when wounded: "My word, what an 'ospital. Had American millionaires to wait on us. They did it right, too. They're a decent lot, them millionaires. Waited on us 'and an' foot. An' the grub! All French, an' cooked by a real French chef."
Another soldier described French tobacco as"something you have to smoke all day to get a smoke."
After his first fight with the Germans a soldier who had been through the last Boer war, said; "This is fighting if you like. South Africa was a tea-party to it. The shells go by with a horrible sort of hiss, and then burst with a roar that puts thunder in the shade, and if you are near you probably lose your head and arms, and various portions of your anatomy."
Writing of a wound, a sporting soldier said: "The next day, when partridge shooting was beginning at home, sure enough I was 'winged' among the turnips."
Another man said that when the shrapnel came it seemed as big as a motor-'bus and to hit him all over. "The shells were like small beer barrels in the air."
An Irish soldier wrote: "We charged the Kaiser's crush with a yell that would have put the fear of death into the heart of the most stoical, and with our bayonets we dug them out of their trenches, same as you'd dig bully beef out of a can."
An Irish soldier remarked to an interviewer when asked what the war was like: "There ain't anything to talk about. It's fight, an' march, an' fight again, with maybe a crack on the 'ead once in a while.It is the biggest rifle meeting I ever saw—Bisley isn't in it."
The rain that fell in September in the trenches, he said, was so heavy that it was like as if the earth had been turned upside down and water had been poured in at the other side.
Another remark was that he had slept so much in odd places that now he thought he could sleep on a clothes-line.
Another soldier who slept in odd places was Lance-Corporal Waller, of the 4th Royal Fusiliers: "I have slept with strange company since I came out. One night with sheep, another in a schoolroom, once on top of a pigsty, once in a manger, in several ditches, in a first-class drawing-room, in 4 inches of snow, behind the counter of a café, and in a feather bed."
A gunner thus described the work of his battery: "We just rained shells on the Germans until we were deaf and choking. I don't think a gun on the position could have sold for old iron after we had finished, and the German gunners would be just odd pieces of clothing and bits of accoutrement."
One of the Black Watch wrote: "We have had a fiendish week of fighting around A——. We had to force our way step by step. Every inch we marched was coloured red with the blood of our men and the Germans. It was like passing througha graveyard where an earthquake had turned up all the corpses and left them lying above ground. As we picked our way through the long lane of dead, that never seemed to have any turning, we noticed among them now and then wounded men, who begged hard for water or some assistance in doing up their bandages. It was pitiful, and we were so helpless."
Another soldier wrote: "You can always tell the Germans who have never been in action against us before. The ones who know what to expect come up very gingerly, like men sneaking into the vestry of a church to rob the collection boxes. The new hands come across in a fine, jaunty way until they get a volley into them, and then they stare up at the sky to see who's throwing things at them. That's the ones who are able to look up, for some of them are done for, and have looked at the sky for the last time. We are showing the Germans that there are a few goods marked 'Made in England.' Our officers are the real goods, the very best. If the Germans had been worth their house-room they would have put an end to the whole of us at the battle of Mons. They came on like a swarm of bees, and we did enjoy it. It was like firing at a mountain; you could not miss it. Sorry I can't stop to write more. We are going to business at 7 p.m. ('Where's my gun?') Whatwould you like out of the crown jewels in Berlin? That's where we are bound for."
Some soldiers who had lost their regiments gave this description of hiding from the Germans: "When night came we endeavoured to escape from our perilous position, and just outside the door we found a German sentry. We passed quite close to him, but didn't stop to say 'Good-night.' How we did it I can't for the life of me tell, but we did it, and then made off as we thought towards the British lines, but to our disgust found we were going right into the German lines. We decided, therefore, to anchor there for the night and get away in the morning. We found this was the German Headquarters Staff, so that we can say we dined with the German generals that night, the only difference being that they were inside and we were outside; they were having wines, etc., and we had swedes and no etc."
A soldier said of a battle that it was "like a display of fireworks at the Crystal Palace with the wounded and dead left out. Last week we got shrapnel for breakfast, dinner, and tea, but the enemy might have saved himself the trouble of dishing out those doses, as they were absolutely ineffective."
One of our men gave a dying German soldier's opinion of the British Army: "When I was hitI lay for hours on the ground, and got chummy with a German chap, who had got a nasty sabre cut in the head as well as a bayonet stab in the kidneys, and was 'booked through.' He knew his number was up, but he was as cheery as though he were at a wedding instead of a funeral. He talked about the fighting, and dealt out praise and blame to French, German, and British alike. He thought a lot of our Army, and spoke highly of its fighting capacity. He said it was wonderful the way we faced odds and difficulties that would have beaten any other army. Almost the last words he said were: 'You'll win this time, and you deserve to win your victory, but we'll never forget or forgive, and some day a new Germany will avenge us.'"
The following descriptions are from the letters of soldiers: "Fighting's kindergarten work compared with lying in your damp clothes in the washed out trenches night and day with, maybe, not a chance of getting any more warmth than you can get from a wax match. We were lying in the trenches in the early morning, with chattering teeth, between which we were muttering prayers for only a spoonful of good brandy or rum to put some heat into us, when there arose a frightful din all round, and the pickets were driven in as though a team of mad bulls was chasing them through the meadows at home. 'We're in for it,' says I to TommyGledhill, my chum. 'Anything's better than lying here,' said he. 'Anyhow, it'll warm us up just as well as brandy, and it'll help a few more Germans to a place where they'll not be bothered with chills.'"
"We have had a lot of fighting since the 5th. On Sunday we got it very hot indeed. Nothing less than hell with the lid off will describe it accurately, but please excuse my strong words. We had a fine time, I can tell you—a proper Guy Fawkes' turnout."
Three men of the 5th Lancers found a house that had been left in a hurry all complete with cooking pots. "I am preparing the supper, which smells all right. I am perfectly happy, as this seems the proper country for me, and I never felt better in my life. I am picking up French all right, but I have not started eating frogs yet."
One of the Somerset Light Infantry wrote: "I made a pudding for the boys the other day. I swear it was bullet-proof, but, all the same, it went down with a little jam."
The following is from a letter written by one of the Connaught Rangers and printed inThe Evening News: "Sure, and it was the grand time we had entirely, and I wouldn't have missed it for lashings of money. It was near to Cambrai when we had our best time. The Germans kept pressing our rearguard all the time, and at last we could stand it no longer, so the word was passed round thatwe were to give them hell and all. They kept pressing on and on in spite of our murderous fire until there was at least five to one, and we were like to be cut off. With that up got the colonel. 'Rangers of Connaught,' says he, 'the eyes of all Ireland are on you this day, and I know you never could disgrace the old country by letting Germans beat you while you have arms in your hands and hearts in your breasts. On, then, and at them, and if you don't give them the soundest thrashing they ever got in their lives you needn't look me in the face again in this world or the next.' And we went for them with just what you would know of a prayer to the Blessed Mother of our Lord to be merciful to the loved ones at home if we should fall in the fight. We charged through and through them until they broke and ran like frightened hares in terror of the hounds. They screamed just like babies. After that taste of the fighting quality of the Rangers they never troubled us any more that day, but next day more of them came up, and managed to cut off half a company of our boys holding a post on our left. The German officer rushed off to Tim Flanagan, the biggest caution in the whole regiment, and called on him to surrender the file of men under his orders. 'Is it me your honour's after talking to in that way?' says Tim, in that bold way of his. 'Sure, now, it's yourselfthat ought to be surrendering, and if you're not off this very minute, you ill-mannered German omadhaun, it's me will be after giving you as much cold steel as'll do you between this and the Kingdom of Heaven.' Then the German officer gave the word to his men, and what happened after that I can't tell to you, for it was just then I got a bullet between my ribs; but I can tell you that neither Tim nor any of his men surrendered, nor did the Germans get that position until it pleased the colonel to order the retirement."
The Connaught Rangers, however, were not the only soldiers who revelled in a fray. Here is what even a sensible English soldier wrote in reference to a battle: "At 12.30 a shell hit my rifle and smashed it to matchwood. I next got my cap knocked off my head, and I went to pick it up. Then I got a bullet in the muscle of my right arm, which put me down for a couple of hours. But, never mind, my dear, I had a good run for my money."
Here is a pen picture of part of a battle: "Fellows were being knocked out all round, and wounded were crying for help. Frequently one would say to his neighbour, 'Bill, how's ta gettin' on?' but Bill, who had been as cheery as a cricket just before, was found to be picked off. Our ranks were so thinned that by the time we got within chargingdistance of the enemy's trenches we had not sufficient men left for a charge. A shell burst close to me, and I thought I had lost both my legs. I crawled to a haystack, where there were a number of other wounded fellows, and one who was not. The latter was assisting the wounded. Presently some Germans came up, and ordered the unwounded man to run. He had not gone 10 yards when they shot him dead. I thought my time had come, but the Germans made off. An R.A.M.C. man had his head blown off while putting wounded men into an ambulance. I was close to Colonel Knight when he was killed. His last words were, 'Never mind me, men; go on and capture the guns.' The German shrapnel firing was absolutely deadly."
The effect of searchlights is thus described: "In the dark the Germans turned on searchlights. We could see them hunting about for someone to pot at. Uncanny that was. To see the blooming big lane of light working round and round. It was like a monstrous eye, looking for its prey. Then we heard the shells whistle. And when the pale, weird light came round to us and lit us up so that we could see each other's faces, Lord, it made my blood run cold—just as I used to feel when I was a nipper and woke up and saw a light and thought it was a ghost, and lay there wondering what would happen next."
Unconscious Humorists
Itcannot be claimed, perhaps, for any one class of society that they are more humorous than are others, but as soldiers live, day and night, in a crowd, they sharpen each other's wits, and their training has, or ought to have, the effect of making them good observers.
As the British soldier is brave without knowing it, so is he an unconscious humorist. He does not set up to be that sad thing—a "funny man."
Our soldiers began the campaign against Germany facetiously by printing in chalk on the troop trains at Boulogne "No-stop run to Berlin."
When our soldiers come home, you will hear some wonderful French. A man from Limerick asked a war correspondent to translate an English sentence into French. "I did it to the best of my ability". He looked at me very solemnly; then said: 'Do it agin, sorr.' I did it again, and he stopped me. 'Whisht, hold yer jaw, or be me soul the guarrd'llarrest ye for a German spy; yer Frinch is homemade an' brought up on th' bottle.'
A bombardier of the Royal Field Artillery wrote:
"One of our fellows thought he would try for some eggs at a farmhouse. Naturally they couldn't understand him, so he opened his mouth, rubbed his stomach, flapped his arms and cried, 'Cock-adoodle-doo!' The eggs came promptly. Another chap tried to get some bread at a farm. After he had made all sorts of queer signs the woman seemed to understand and said, 'Oui, oui, M'sieur,' rushed back into the house and brought back a bundle of hay! There was a terrific roar of laughter from the troops. The non-plussed look on the woman's face and 'fed up' expression on the chap's made a picture."
Private Macnamara, of the Royal Fusiliers, relates that during the fighting on the Aisne a German called out to a company of Fusiliers: "Wait till we catch you in our barber's shop in London." The Fusiliers wiped out the German company with the bayonet, a private shouting: "You won't get to London again."
Another soldier wrote, probably joking: "Our trenches and the enemy's were only a couple of hundred yards apart, but we could not get the beggars to give us a chance to pot them. So at last I called out, 'Waiter!' and up went five heads at once."
At one time, when the German shells were particularly numerous, a private of the 1st Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry called out, "Fall in here for your pay, A company." There was a good laugh.
Another shell also caused a good laugh. In the rush to avoid it, two of our men fell over each other, and one actually sat upon the shell. It exploded. When the smoke cleared away the man was discovered to have escaped with very slight injuries to himself; but his trousers were torn to shreds, to the great amusement of his comrades.
A private of the Royal Irish Regiment wrote this to his mother: "There's plenty of hard fighting coming our way these days, and though we suffer cruelly once in a while, we always give them something to let them know that we have not lost our fighting powers in 'Paddy's land,' whatever else we may have lost. You could not help laughing at some of the tales the German prisoners have about us. When they knew they had been captured by an Irish regiment they wanted to know how it was we were not at home in the civil war that was going on. Says I to one of them that came off with that blarney in his queer English, 'This is the only war we know, or want to know, about for the time being, and there's mightily little that's civil about it or the way you are behaving yourselves.'"
It was the birthday of Pat Ryan, of the Connaught Rangers, and he thought that he ought to do something to celebrate it. Without telling anyone, he went out of the trenches in the afternoon, and came back after dusk with two big Germans in tow. How or where he got them nobody knows. The captain of his company asked him how he managed to catch the two. "Sure, and I surrounded them, Sorr," was the reply.
Even in the midst of a bayonet charge an Irish soldier caused laughter by calling out, "Look at thim German divils retratin' with their backs facin' us."
Private William Price, R.A.M.C., wrote: "Last Sunday week about 6 p.m. a shell (coal boxes we call them), eight inches wide and four feet long, passed through the roof and side wall of a barn in which the bearers sleep, and fell into the grounds of the hospital, where we were having a little service; but, thank God, it didn't explode. Strange to relate, the subject of the sermon was 'Miracles,' and this was one of the greatest, for had it come a little later there would have been several of us having food and rest in the barn. The shell smashed heavy beams, hurling them just where I should have been resting. We buried the shell, and enclosed it with a fence. This is the verse we made up and placed on it":
Sunday, September 27th, 1914.
"Here lies a shell of German invention,To do us great harm was their intention;And in striking a barn it caused great alarm,While the troops were singing the ——th Psalm.But don't be afraid, the danger is o'er;Still if it goes off we'll say 'au revoir.'So now we'll conclude with love and affection,Sincerely trusting there'll be no resurrection."
An Irish soldier told his mother in a letter that they had German shells for breakfast—not egg shells. She was not to believe, however, about the hardships they had to endure, even from her son. "I never believe anything I hear and only half of what I say."
Outside a temporary post office was the notice, "We close from noon to 2 p.m." Underneath a joker wrote, "Prussian cannon are requested to do the same."
The Germans, in crushing numbers, were about to enter a town. It was necessary to hold them back long enough to enable the British troops to retire in good order. A handful of Scots were selected for this duty. Sheltered in one of the first houses of the village, they kept up a well-sustained fire on the enemy, but had to endure themselves a perfect storm of bullets. The shattered windows flew in all directions. The walls were riddled with bullet holes. Already several of our men haddropped. Suddenly the German fire ceased; the enemy were evidently shifting ground to a better position, and one of those silent moments of waiting ensued—the worst of all to endure. While the pause lasted, a Scottish sergeant noticed that our frail fortress was a grocer's shop. On a shelf he found a few packets of chocolate. An idea occurred to him. Turning to his men, he held up the packets, saying: "Whoever bowls his man over gets a piece." The German fusilade began anew. The Scots, roaring with laughter at the sergeant's marksmanship prizes, fired back as coolly as if at target practice. The sergeant, while keeping his own rifle busy, watched the effect of the fire on the advancing enemy. He recorded each successful shot with "Got him," and handed over a cake of chocolate to the winning marksman. Alas! there were few prize winners who lived to taste their reward.
Here is an instance of dour Scotch humour. Two Highlanders, one bigger than the other, were both hit, and there was only one stretcher available. The little one refused to enter it and the big one got angry at the refusal, so raising himself with his unwounded arm he cried, "You go the noo, Jock, an if you're not slippy about it, you'll gaur me gae ye something ye'll remember when am a' richt again." Jock didn't wait any longer after that.
A British cavalry subaltern who was cut off fromhis men hid in the edge of a wood by a road. It was not long before he saw an unsuspecting armed German soldier patrolling the road. He could have shot the man without warning, but felt that it would be akin to murder to kill him in cold blood. In order to instil a little of the spirit of combat into the affair, therefore, he crept out of cover, ran up behind the "boch," as our Allies would call him, and gave him a ferocious kick. Instead of showing fight the startled and pained German gave a yell and ran for dear life, leaving the subaltern laughing too hard to shoot.
This sort of chivalry, however, had for once to pay a penalty. A patrol of the Gloucestershire Regiment met two German soldiers looting an orchard. They did not like to shoot them with their backs turned, so they shouted to give them a chance of defending themselves. One of the Germans turned about and sent a bullet crashing into the brain of the man who had been the first to suggest that they should be warned.
A Highlander writes home from the war to a friend that things are going so badly with "our dear old chum Wilhelm" that "I've bet X—— a new hat that I'll be home by Christmas."
Bets are common in the trenches. Gunners wager about the number of their hits, riflemen on the number of misses by the enemy. A soldier tolda correspondent that they gambled in the trenches on the next man to be killed. "We'd get up a little sweepstake, draw names and—wait! There was always a favourite. I held that not altogether enviable position three times. But I disappointed my backers! One day I noticed that a fellow a few yards away kept on turning round to look at me. He did it so often that at last I realised with a bit of a shock that he had drawn me in the sweepstake. He was waiting to see me tumble down with a bullet through me. It would have been worth 15s. to him."
Here is an extract from a letter: "I received your request for a German helmet off a head I had knocked over. Will try to get you a German's ear or some other portable article. I am very fit and well, and trying to force British culture on the Germans. I think now we have put a spoke in the Kaiser's wheel for good, and I am proud to think that I have been a small splinter in the spoke."
It is unlawful to trade with the enemy, but our soldiers consider that it is legitimate to play practical jokes on the Germans when their trenches are near ours, as is sometimes the case. A beetroot field was near, so our men carved caricatures of the Kaiser on beetroot and inside put reports of the Allies' successes in East and West. The "busts" were then adroitly hurled into the German trenches.This sort of pleasantry frequently led to furious abuse and the liberal exchange of bullets, generally harmless.
At one place the German trenches were advanced to within sixty yards of the British first line of trenches. The Germans had fixed up barbed wire entanglements, to which they attached here and there a number of empty jam tins, arranged in couples in such a way that on the slightest disturbance they were bound to jangle. Crawling very cautiously out in the dead of night, one of our men fastened the end of a ball of string to the nearest point of the barbed wire, and let the string run out as he crawled no less cautiously back again. The first tug at the string when he had regained the shelter of the British trench started a faint jangling, which startled the German sentries. The next produced a fusilade; and the Germans blazed away at the clattering jam tins, while the British roared with laughter.
For nearly a week a battery of the R.F.A. on a ridge had been shelling the enemy's position, and the Germans could not find them; but at last they did, and made it so hot for a time that the gunners had temporarily to leave their charges. When darkness fell, however, they removed the guns to a fresh position on the left, but, in order to mislead the enemy, they rigged up some ploughs and bundles ofstraw to resemble guns, and left them in the old position. The ruse was entirely successful, and our men were laughing up their sleeve all the next day, for the Germans kept up an incessant fire upon the dummy guns.
In one trench, where a German sharpshooter regularly opened the day with a shot through a certain loophole, the trench amused itself by insuring being waked up for the fighting. They hung a strip of metal at the back of the loophole. The clang of bullet on metal woke them up—an alarm clock "made in Germany."
Here is a tale of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The Germans opposite them get their rations—cognac, bread, and meat—every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday night. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders found this out, and regularly on these nights they did a bayonet attack, and brought back quite a lot of grub.