The British soldier

by E. J. Hardy

Whatever Christians who profess more do in reference to brotherly love, British soldiers are real brothers to each other on active service. Each man seems to say, "He that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother."

The following is from a sergeant's letter in The Evening News: "Out there sublime deeds of heroism are being performed every day by common soldiers whom the ordinary 'civvy' would pass by with contempt in times of peace. After Cambrai I was thrown a lot with a wild Glasgow Irishman belonging to the Royal Scots and a wounded man of the Dorsets. We took refuge in a farmhouse, and one day the Irishman had the ill-luck of showing himself to a party of Germans on the prowl. He took it into his head that he hadn't played the game by bringing the Germans down on us, and after reporting their presence he said he was going out just for a bit of a dander. He had not an earthly chance of escaping. Before he left I told him so, but that didn't weigh with him at all. 'It's like this,' he said, 'you've got a missus and children to look after. So's that chap in the corner. I'm as bad as they make 'em, and nobody will be a thraneen the poorer if I'm shot this very minute. It was my carelessness in going about that gave us away to the Germans. They don't know there's anybody here but me, and if I rush out they'll get me and go off content. He walked coolly out to the front gate, and made a rush into the fields to the left. The Germans saw him and fired. He fell riddled with bullets, and they went after him. They must have thought that he was the only man in the house, for they didn't come back, and we lay there for three days until we managed to get back to our own lines."

Another man also thought of wife and kids. "In a night fight one of the Gloucesters had his rifle knocked out of his hand, and a big German lunged at him with a bayonet. Quick as lightning one of his mates sprang between him and the German, and received the thrust in his chest. He died within an hour, and when they asked him why he did it, his answer was, 'Oh, God, I couldn't help it. He's got a wife and kids.'"

A corporal of the Bedfordshire Regiment wrote: "Near our trenches there were a lot of wounded, and their cries for water were pitiful. In the trenches was a quiet chap of the Engineers, who could stand it no longer. He collected all the water bottles he could lay hold of, and said he was going out. The air was thick with shell and rifle fire, and to show yourself at all was to sign your death warrant. That chap knew it as well as we did, but that was not going to stop him. He got to the first man all right and gave him a swig from a bottle. No sooner did he show himself than the Germans opened fire. After attending to the first man he crawled along the ground to others until he was about a quarter of a mile away from us. Then he stood up and zigzagged towards another batch of wounded, but that was the end of him. The German fire got hotter and hotter. He was hit badly, and with just a slight upward fling of his arms he dropped to earth like the hero he was. Later he was picked up with the wounded, but he was as dead as they make them out here. The wounded men for whose sake he had risked and lost his life thought a lot of him, and were greatly cut up at his death. One of them who was hit so hard that he would never see another Sunday said to me as we passed the Engineer chap, who lay with a smile on his white face, and had more bullets in him than would set a battalion of sharpshooters up in business for themselves, 'He was a rare good one, he was. It's something worth living for to have seen a deed like that, and now that I have seen it, I don't care what becomes of me.' That's what we all felt about it."

One of the King's Royal Rifles told in a letter how a Highlander milked a cow under rifle and shell fire to get something for his wounded mates to drink when the water ran out. Also how a boy of the Connaught Rangers rushed 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 50 feet of the goal. The wounded chap had his apple brought in after an artillery man had been wounded in getting at it. 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."

Sergeant J. Rolfe, 2nd Battalion King's Royal Rifles, wrote: "When I got hit, I couldn't say how long I lay there, but a chum of mine, Tommy Quaife, under a perfect hail of bullets and shells, dragged me to safety, and said, 'Cheer up, Smiler, here's a fag. I'm going back for Sandy' (his other chum). He never got there. Poor Tommy got a piece of shell and was buried the same night."

In a lancer charge near Cambrai a man dropped a letter. It had arrived just as the order was given to mount, and he had not had time to read it. Even in mid-charge a comrade saw it fall out of his tunic and returned it at great risk.

Two Highlanders were carrying a wounded comrade, and he dropped a stick of chocolate, a thing of which only soldiers in the field under trying conditions know the value. He fretted and worried about it, and at last one of his chums volunteered to go back for it to where it had been dropped, not more than two hundred yards away. He never came back. In full view of his companions he was hit by a bullet and fell dead. There was another case where a religious Dublin Fusilier lost his life because he stayed just long enough to cross the hands of a dead comrade, and say a prayer for his departed soul.

One night 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 he 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. On the afternoon of the following day he had acute pneumonia.

The following was related by a British Hussar. After the charge of the Highlanders on the German heavy guns near Hanbourdin the Hussar was sent with a message to the base. On the way he encountered a Seaforth Highlander going in the same direction. Something in the man's set face prompted the question: "Are you hurt?" "Aye, a sma' matter," was the reply. The man's arm was shattered from shoulder to elbow. "Are you going to sick bay?" said the cavalryman. "It's a mile and a half away. Get on my gee." "No, no," said the Scot, "I'll just walk, you'll find many worse hit than me."