Part 14

For two whole days the rain came down on us in bucketfuls. It was like having the sea bottom turned upwards and the contents poured over us. At one point tents were floating around like yachts on the lake at the Welsh Harp. Those who had been foolish enough to get on the wrong side of their clothes the night before had the devil’s own job to find them in the morning. Swimming after your things when you wake up isn’t an aid to quick dressing: _A Private of the Grenadiers_.

Asked for Him

A wounded soldier I picked up the other day told me an amusing tale, although he was severely hurt. His regiment was capturing some Germans, and they were being disarmed, when this chap, in asking a German for his rifle, was bayoneted twice by the German and fell down unconscious. When he came round he said to his pals, “Where is the blighter?” “Never mind, Mick, don’t worry,” replied his pals; “we have just buried him”: _Sergt. Hughes, Army Medical Corps_.

Mighty Particular

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 reduce 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 under fire: _Corpl. C. Hamer, Coldstream Guards_.

Swear Words

One night when we were toiling along like to drop with fatigue, we ran right into a big party of horsemen posted near a wood. We thought they were Germans, for we could not make out the colour of the uniforms or anything else, until we heard someone sing out, “Where the hell do you think you’re going to?” Then we knew they were friends, and I don’t think I was ever so glad to hear a real good English swear: _A Driver of the Royal Artillery_.

Maids of All Work

Our Allies were greatly “taken” with the Highlanders, and many of them expressed surprise at the kindly behaviour and hearty manner of the Scotsmen. Apparently they thought the “kilties” were of a rather barbaric nature. Two Highlanders were billeted with an old French lady. Her strange lodgers gave the landlady no end of entertainment. They insisted on washing the dishes and doing all the housework, and when finished with these duties went the length of delving the garden: _Private D. Goldie_.

Step Outside

In camp one night one of the German prisoners was chock-full of peace-at-any-price cant, and talked a lot about all men being brothers. This didn’t please Terry Monahan, an Irish private of the Liverpool Regiment, and, in a towering rage, he turned on the German: “You dirty, church-going, altar-defiling, priest-murdering German devil,” he cried, “ye’re no brother of mine, and by the holy saints if ye’ll only step outside for wan minit it’s me will knock all the nonsense out of yer ugly head”: _A Sergeant of the York and Lancaster Regiment_.

Didn’t Wait!

There were two lads of our regiment who were both hit, and there was only one stretcher for them. Each had his views about which had the most need of it first. The big one got ragged with the other’s refusal, so raising himself with his unwounded arm, he cried, “You go the noo, Jock, an’ if you’re no slippy about it, you’ll gaur me gae ye something ye’ll remember when I’m a’ richt again.” Jock didn’t wait any longer after that: _A Private of the Highland Light Infantry_.

Kaiser and Highlander

During the advance we saw chalked notices written by Germans, such as “Wilhelm, Emperor of Europe.” Then underneath you would see a British Tommy had written, “I don’t think.” One curious incident was the sight of a Highlander who had taken pity on a woman refugee who was carrying two babies. He took one up in each arm, and carried them along whilst the woman walked by his side carrying his rifle. I could not see what Highland regiment he belonged to because there was hardly a man who had a badge: _Corpl. W. L. Pook, Royal Engineers_.

“Shove-Ha’penny”

An infantry chap found a table and, scoring lines on it with his bayonet, joined in a game of “shove-ha’penny” with four other Tommies. The sequel came later, as sequels will. When the party managed to reassemble for another game a shell had smashed the table to smithereens. “My luck’s out wi’ the infernal shove-ha’penny,” said the infantry chap. “I’m blowed if I’ll play any more.” Then he explained that just before the war he was playing for pots of beer in a public-house when the police raided the place. “Now it’s the Germans,” he added bitterly: _A Private of the Army Medical Corps_.

Comments

You hear some quaint remarks under heavy artillery fire. One day everything was quiet for a bit except for their shells, and one fellow shouted, “Fall in here for your pay, ‘A’ Company,” which caused men and officers to laugh aloud. When once we get under fire we take very little notice of it, for it seems to come natural to us. All we look for is something to shoot at, taking no notice of what our comrades are doing on either side. When ammunition is gone we shout, “Some more souvenirs for the Huns”: _Pte. Homewood, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry_.

“Mein Gott!”

A funny thing happened about a week ago. The scout officer of our regiment went out reconnoitring one night and rather lost his bearings. As he thought he was on his way back he bumped up against a trench which he took for his own, and started to walk along it till he came to someone, obviously an officer, walking up and down. “Hullo! Good evening,” he said; when the other officer, jumping back, said, “Mein Gott, the English!” and before he had got over his surprise the scout officer jumped out of the trench and got away without being hit: _A British Scout_.

“Tickets, Please!”

There’s a corporal of a regiment that I won’t name who 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 a 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: _A Gunner of the Royal Artillery_.

No Uhlans Need Apply!

We were about as hungry as men could be when we came on a party of Uhlans just about to sit down to a nice 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 wanted thinning 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 to come outside to settle it with 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: _Trooper Dale, Royal Dragoons_.

Cooking Their Dinner

Have you ever tried cooking a dinner under shell fire? It’s about as exciting as anything you could have in this world. Yesterday we were in the firing line, and as there were no prospects of relief, we had to make a spit and roast some fowls we had been given by the villagers. Just when they were doing nicely, and we were going around to turn them, the Germans found the range, and shells began to drop all around. We had to lie low, and when there was a lull one of us would rush out and turn the nearest bird, and then run back again under cover. We got them cooked all right, but two of our chaps were killed outright and four injured. That’s a big bill to pay for a dinner; but soldiers are like beggars, they can’t be choosers. Out here is no place for the faint-hearts, and we want only real men, who are afraid of nothing: _Pte. T. Bayley, 5th Irish Lancers_.

Business as Usual

Our men had just had their papers from home, and have noted, among other things, that “Business as Usual” is the motto of patriotic shopkeepers. In hard fighting the Wiltshires, holding an exposed position, ran out of ammunition, and had to suspend firing until a party brought fresh supplies across the open under a heavy fire. Then the wag of the regiment, a Cockney, produced a biscuit tin with “Business as Usual” crudely printed on it, and set it up before the trenches as a hint to the Germans that the fight could now be resumed on more equal terms. Finally the tin had to be taken in because it was proving such a good target for the German riflemen, but the joker was struck twice in rescuing it: _A Private of the Wiltshire Regiment_.

For Neuralgia!

We’re just keeping at it in the same old slogging style that always brings us out on top. There’s one chap in our company has got a ripping cure for neuralgia, but he isn’t going to take out a patent, because it’s too risky, and might kill the patient. Good luck’s one of the ingredients, and you can’t always be sure of that. He was lying in the trenches the other day nearly mad with pain in his face, when a German shell burst close by. He wasn’t hit, but the explosion knocked him senseless for a bit. “Me neuralgia’s gone,” says he, when he came round. “And so’s six of your mates,” says we. “Oh, crikey!” says he. His name’s Palmer, and that’s why we call the German shells now “Palmer’s Neuralgia Cure”: _Pte. H. Thomson, 1st Gordon Highlanders_.

“The Wearin’ o’ the Green!”

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 yourself that 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: _A Private of the Connaught Rangers_.

Not a Yarn

A barber would do a roaring trade if he came here, no one having shaved for weeks. Consequently, beards vary according to the age of the individual and the length of time he has not shaved. Mine, for instance, is something to gaze on and remember. They are not by any means what a writer in a lady’s novelette would describe as “a perfect dream.” They are scattered over my chivvy-chase in anything but order, nineteen on one side, fifteen on the other, and thirty-five on the chin, intermixed with a small smattering of down and dirt. Dirt, did I say? That doesn’t describe it. Water is at a discount, except for drinking: soap something to read about, and you wonder when you last used it, and when you will use it again. I can safely say, “Three weeks ago I used your soap; since then I have used no other.” And that’s not spinning you a yarn: _Sergt. Diggins, Leicestershire Regiment_.

“Hallo, Old Tin Hat!”

About four thousand Germans, backed up by heavy artillery play, tried to cross the river. There were only 300 Connaught Rangers all told who could be spared to keep them from fixing pontoons. Down to the river-bank they came, firing for all they were worth. The Irishmen were entrenched, and shouted across the river such greeting as “Hallo, old tin hat! When are you coming over?” and as soon as the Irishmen caught sight of the great boots of the Germans, Hibernian humour was irrepressible. The Rangers shouted, “We see you; it’s no good hiding there. We can see your ears sticking out!” Then the Rangers settled down to enjoy themselves, but a little later some more German infantry, which had crossed the river to another point, attempted to outflank them. It was terribly hard work, but the way the Irish stuck it would have taken your breath away: _A Nottingham Artilleryman_.

Orange and Green

Mick Clancy is that droll with his larking and bamboozling the Germans that he makes us nearly split our sides laughing at him and his ways. Yesterday he got a stick and put a cap on it so that it peeped above the trenches just like a man, and then the Germans kept shooting away at it until they must have used up tons of ammunition, and there was us all the time laughing at them. Tommy McQuiston, the big sergeant from the Black North, does nothing else morning, noon, and night but talk about Ned Carson and what he and his volunteers will do when they come out to fight the Germans. He has to put up with a lot of banter and back chat from us on the quiet in the sergeants’ mess, but, sure, though he’s mad Orange, he knows as well as anyone that we think no less of him for that. To get his dander up we tell him he’s going to be the door porter in the Dublin Parliament when the war’s over; but he never begrudges us our bit of diversion and devilment, and says more like he’ll end his days as a warder in a convict prison in charge of us: _Sergeant T. Cahill_.

XVI. STORIES OF SACRIFICE

_What have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England, my own?_

W. E. HENLEY’S “For England’s Sake.”

_Soldier, soldier, if by shot and shell They wound him, my dear lad, my sweetheart O, He’ll lie bleeding in the rain And call me, all in vain, Crying for the fingers of his sweetheart O._

MAURICE HEWLETT’S “Soldier, Soldier.”

Give them a cigarette and let them grip the operating-table, and they will stick anything until they practically collapse: _Corpl. H. Stewart, Royal Army Medical Corps_.

Poor Minnie!

They have shot my greatest friend from under me--my horse Minnie, the most faithful animal in the world. God forgive them for that; I never will: _Pte. Knowles, 6th Dragoons_.

His Last Wish

I came across a young chap sitting with his back against a tree--dead, and around him, in a circle, he placed all his letters and photographs, as much as to say: “Please post these to the people concerned, as I am dying”: _A Private of the Northumberland Fusiliers_.

The Christian Way

One of our men holding his water-bottle to a wounded German was shot dead close to Mons on Sunday. Another stopped under fire to light a cigarette, when a bullet struck him on the fingers, and one hand will have to come off: _Private S. Burns_.

Asked for the Colours

In the middle of the battle a driver got wounded and asked to see the colours before he died, and he was told by an officer that the guns were his colours. He replied, “Tell the drivers to keep their eyes on their guns, because if we lose our guns we lose our colours”: _Driver W. Moore, Royal Field Artillery_.

Not a Murmur

The grandest thing to buck a man up is the way our men take their wounds. You do not hear them yelling when they are hit. You hear the words, “I’ve got it, boys. Hard luck!” It is grand to see the way they take it, a smile on their face, and not a murmur as they are carried down on the stretchers: _Pte. A. Robson, 7th Batt. Royal Fusiliers_.

Saving a Tragedy

I was fetching our bottles of water. I crept to one house. The woman tried to tell me something in French. I could not understand, so she pulled me in the next room. There was a woman just confined. She was on the point of madness. I could not do anything, so I told my officer. He sent me for the parson, and got some of us together, and we carried her, bed and all, to a safe place: _Pte. E. Smith, 2nd Worcestershire Regiment_.

Going Home!

It was wonderful how cheerful the wounded were. One poor fellow who had been shot in the head, and hit by a shrapnel bullet in the mouth--he was apparently dying--pointed out to me another man, badly wounded, remarking, “That poor bloke is going home; he will be gone before me”: _Pte. W. Webb, Royal Army Medical Corps_.

Like Jackie!

I was in a cottage in France, in the country, Tuesday night, to cook a bit of grub--we had had none all day--and while I was doing it the woman cried bitterly, as her husband was at the front, but I tried to cheer her up as best I could; she had a boy like Jackie, so I told her I was married and had a wife and child, and she cried worse still then: _Private Davies, of Ipswich_.

Lit His “Fag”

“Is there anything I can do for you, old chap?” I asked a wounded man of the Hampshires, one day. “Yes,” he answered, “you might light my fag for me. You will find matches and all in my inside pocket.” I did as he asked, and the last glimpse I caught of him he was lying out there with German shells and bullets flying all around, calmly smoking a “Gold Flake.” That spirit is characteristic of our lads: _A Private of the Grenadier Guards_.

Cheerful in Verse

I was through all the fighting, commencing with the battle of Mons, until the 9th of last month, when I got wounded. This little verse will explain a lot:

I was wounded on the 9th, Near the River Marne. They got me in hospital on the 13th, On the 18th they took off my arm:

_A Corporal of the Durham Light Infantry_.

Succouring the Enemy

A lot of German wounded were moved into a wood for protection and shelter against the rain. Their own artillery opened fire, and soon all the trees were ablaze. The cries of the wounded were agonizing. A party of our men asked permission from their officers to go and carry the Germans out. They did it under heavy fire all the time. The wounded men were very grateful, and said that had it not been for our lads they would have been burned alive: _A Private of the Highland Light Infantry_.

A Splendid Corporal

Near Cambrai one dark night the British took the offensive against the Germans, who were holding a bridge spanning the canal. When our men reached an embankment running sharply down to the river several failed to secure a foothold and fell into the water. Four of the men, who were unable to swim, were in imminent danger of drowning, when Corporal Brindall, an excellent swimmer, plunged into the river and rescued all four in turn. He was clambering up the embankment himself, when a German shell exploded near him, killing him instantly: _Drummer H. Savage, 1st Batt. Royal Berks_.

A Yorkshire “Tyke”

One night in the trenches a man of the West Yorkshire Regiment took off his coat and wrapped it around a wounded chum who had to lie there until the ambulance took him away. All that night the game “tyke” stood in the trenches in his shirt-sleeves, with water up to his waist, and the temperature near to freezing-point, quietly returning the German fire. In the morning he would only own to “a bit of a chill that a cup of tea and a smoke would soon put right,” but I wasn’t surprised to learn that he had to be sent down to the base with pneumonia that afternoon. I hope he will pull through: _A Sergeant of the Liverpool Regiment_.

The Other Man!

After one of our hard fights in the Aisne, there was occasion to let the wounded lie out in the rain all night. I came on one man of the Royal Irish Fusiliers who was done for. He had a waterproof cloak over him, but near by was a man of the artillery without any covering at all. I asked the Irishman if I could do anything for him. “Nothing,” he said; “but if you would take this cloak and throw it over that poor chap there I would be so grateful. I will never pull through, but he may if he is attended to at once. Good-bye. See that the vultures don’t get me when I’m gone, will you?”: _A Private from the Aisne_.

A Costly Apple

There was a “boy” of the Connaught Rangers who made a rush out of the trenches under heavy fire to an orchard near by to get an apple for a wounded comrade who was suffering from thirst and hunger. He got the apple all right, but he got a German bullet or two in him as well on the way back, and dropped dead within fifty feet of the goal. The wounded chap had his apple brought in, after an artilleryman had been wounded in getting at it, and I hope he valued it, for it was the costliest apple I ever heard tell of bar one, and that was a long time ago: _A Private of the Highland Light Infantry_.

No Hesitation

Two of our R.A.M.C. men were bringing in a badly wounded trooper on a stretcher, when a fiendish fire was opened on them by a party of Germans posted on a hill about a mile off. Both of the bearers were hit, and though they strove manfully to keep up they collapsed from loss of blood, and the wounded man toppled over with them. A score of our men rushed out to their assistance, but some of them were shot down before they reached the stretcher. Four reached the stretcher and brought it in safely under a hellish fire. All the rest of the wounded were got in safely: _Private H. Sykes_.

Glorious Examples

One fellow had been shot in the forehead: he had been in the trenches, full of water, for six days and seven nights, and yet he said to me, “I don’t care what becomes of me. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I popped four of the Germans off before I got hit.” I made a few of them some cigarettes, and gave them water to drink, and did my best to make them comfortable. You would be surprised at the gratitude which they expressed to me. These men are glorious examples of self-sacrifice. There is no distinction of persons with the wounded out here: _Motor-driver T. Robinson, of Brighton_.

A Kindly German

After Soissons, I was lying on the field badly wounded. Near by was a young fellow of the Northamptonshire Regiment. Standing over him was a German infantryman holding a water-bottle to his lips and trying to soothe him. The wounded man was delirious, and kept calling, “Mother are you there?” all the time. The German seemed to understand, for he passed his hand gently over the feverish brow and caressed the poor lad as tenderly as any woman might have done. Death came at last, and as the soul of the wounded man passed to its last account I saw the German trying to hide his tears: _Corpl. Houston, Seaforth Highlanders_.

Driven Out!

The burning of the poor villagers’ houses was bad enough to see, but the sight of the poor women and children fleeing before the Germans would break a man’s heart. The poor people did not know what to do or where to go. Some of them came to us asking questions, but we, of course, could do nothing, for we did not understand their language and did not know what they were saying. They were in a bad way, and the sight of some of them and their misery brought the tears to the eyes of many of the men of my regiment: _Pte. Rossiter, Royal Irish Rifles_.

Cried Like Babies

The other day I stopped to assist a young lad of the West Kents who had been badly hit by a piece of shell. He hadn’t long to live, and he knew it, too. I asked him if there was any message I could take to someone at home. The poor lad’s eyes filled with tears as he answered, “I ran away from home and ’listed a year ago. Mother and dad don’t know I’m here, but you tell them from me I’m not sorry I did it.” When I told our boys afterwards about that they cried like babies, but, mind you, that is the spirit that is going to pull England through this war, and there isn’t a man of us that doesn’t think of that poor boy and his example every time we go into a fight: _Corporal Sam Haslett_.

The “Kiddies”