THE RECORDER.
[At the concluding session of the Museums Association Conference in Sheffield, Councillor Nuttall, of Southport said it was desirable that every town should make a voice record of every soldier who returned home from the wars, describing his experience in fighting. It would be a valuable record for future generations of the family to know what their ancestor did in the Great War.]
In an Expeditionary Force whose vocabulary included several lurid words there was a certain Battalion renowned for the vigour of its language. And in that Battalion Private Thompson held a reputation which was the envy of all. Not only had he a more varied stock of expletives than anyone else, but he seemed to possess a unique gift for welding them into new and wonderful combinations to meet each fresh situation. Moreover he had an insistent manner of delivering them which alone was sufficient to place him in a class by himself. It was not long before many of his friends gave up trying altogether and let Private Thompson do it all for them. It is even rumoured that on occasions men in distant parts of the line would send for him so that he might come and give adequate expression to feelings which they felt to be beyond their range.
To show you the extent of his fame, it is only necessary to mention that Lieutenant —— composed an ode all about Private Thompson and got it published in Camouflage, the trench gazette of the Nth Division. Two of the verses went, as far as I can remember, something like this:—
As Private Thompson used to say,
He couldn't stand the War;
He cursed about it every day
And every night he swore;
And, while a sense of discipline
Carried him on through thick and thin,
The mud, the shells, the cold, the din
Annoyed him more and more.
The words with which we others cursed
Seemed mild and harmless quips
Compared to those remarks that burst
From Private Thompson's lips;
Haven't you ever heard about
The Prussian Guard at X Redoubt,
How Thompson's language laid them out
Before we came to grips?
Anyhow, after bespattering the air of France and Flanders with a barrage of anathemas for the best part of a year, Private Thompson did something creditable in one of the pushes, and retired to a hospital in England, whence he emerged a few months later with a slight limp, a discharge certificate and a piece of coloured ribbon on his waistcoat. Having expressed his opinion on hospital life, he returned to his native town.
His first shock was when he was met at the station by the local band and conducted up the Station Road and down the beflagged High Street to the accompaniment of martial and patriotic strains. His second was when he was confronted at the steps of the Town Hall by the Mayor and an official gathering of the leading citizens, with an unofficial background of the led ones, and found himself the subject of speeches of adulation and welcome.
He was too dumbfounded to grasp all that was said, but he recovered his senses in time to hear the Mayor assuring his audience that it gave him great pleasure, indeed he might go so far as to say the very greatest pleasure, to welcome on behalf of their town one who had upheld with such distinction and bravery the reputation and honour of the community. And that, although he did not wish to keep them any longer, yet he must just add that he was going to ask Mr. Thompson then and there, while the remembrance of his terrible hardships was still fresh in his mind, to impart them to a phonograph, so that the archives of the town might not lack direct evidence of the experiences, if he might so express it, of her bravest citizen, and future generations might know something of the noble thoughts that surged in so gallant a breast in times of danger, and the fine and honourable words with which those thoughts had been uttered.
The Mayor's peroration annoyed Thompson; the cheers that followed it annoyed him still more, and the subsequent shower of congratulations and vigorous slaps on the back threatened to move him to reply in a speech which might have been unintelligible to the ladies present.
Fortunately the danger was averted. Before he could come into action a select committee of two, specially appointed for the purpose, had seized him by the arms and was conducting him up the steps of the Town Hall. The rapidity and the unexpected nature of the movement threw him out of gear, and he was forced to adopt an attitude of sullen silence during the progress of the little party across the Council Chamber and through a doorway leading into a small room.
This room was furnished only with a table and a chair. On the former stood a phonograph; into the latter the Committee deposited ex-Private Thompson and explained to him that he was desired to sit there and in his own words to recount into the trumpet of the machine his experiences at the Front. That becoming modesty, they added, which hitherto had sealed his lips should now be laid aside. Posterity must not be denied the edification of listening to a hero's story of his share in the Great War. The phonograph was then turned on and the disc began to revolve with a slight grating sound that set Thompson's teeth on edge. He was about to address a few remarks to the Committee when they tactfully withdrew, leaving him alone with the instrument.
For a few seconds he was silent. The machine rasped unchallenged through a dozen revolutions. Then he took a deep breath and, leaning forward, thrust his head into the yawning mouth of the trumpet.
His Worship has sampled the record. The session was a secret one, but the Town has been given to understand that the disc has been sealed up and put away for the use of posterity only.
"HERE, STICK YOUR HEAD DOWN, CHARLIE."
"WHAT—IS THERE AN ORDER COME ROUND ABOUT IT?"