The British soldier

by E. J. Hardy

On one occasion our men, though being fired at by artillery, were kicking about a football. A German aviator who observed this sent in a report that the British forces were thoroughly disorganised and running about their post in blind alarm.

Many men remarked casually in their letters that the letters were written with bullets and shrapnel flying round. One soldier told his mother that his letter was deferred "because the Germans were trying to worry us," but added, "Do not believe half the stories about our hardships. I haven't seen or heard of a man who made complaint of anything. You can't expect a six-course dinner on active service, but we get plenty to fight on."

A Times correspondent told how he asked a wounded British soldier who was sitting on the roadside if his wound hurt him. He replied, "It's not that, but I'm blest if I haven't lost my pipe in that last charge."

The same correspondent saw a number of British soldiers come to Paris after a "terrible tussle" with the enemy, and said that they looked as if they had arrived from a day's holiday on Hampstead Heath, for though dusty, they were trim and smiling, and seemed to be fit for anything.

The excitable Parisians admired the way Mr. Thomas Atkins took everything as a matter of course and accommodated himself to circumstances. They shrieked with admiration when they saw two Highlanders with arms wounded dance a reel on a railway platform.

In another part of France a train full of British soldiers arrived. A Frenchman said to some of them, "Bravo! You have done splendid work, I hope that you will soon get home." "Home, sir?" replied a gunner, "why we're just getting warmed up for work. It took us a few weeks to get used to it, but now we love it and are as fit as fiddles."

"What is it like at the front?" a private of the Royal Irish Fusiliers was asked in a hospital in England. "Well, now it's hard to tell you that unless you've been there, but, faith, I'll make a good try, just to oblige you. It's very little different from what goes on at home. The day's made up of grousing and fighting, except that instead of fighting among ourselves it's the Germans we fight. Maybe the grousing's a bit different, too, from what it is in peace time. The Englishmen swear most when the meals aren't all they might be, but the Scotch and the Irish are mostly angered because the German devils won't come out and fight so's we can give them the cold iron. The English don't seem to mind that so much, so long as they have full stomachs and can keep firing away at the Germans with the big guns and the rifles."

Corporal Graham Hodson, Royal Engineers, wrote to his parents: "I am feeling awfully well, and am enjoying myself no end. Oh, it's a great life!" So little downhearted were his men that an officer, after observing them, said admiringly, "You are a lively lot of beggars. You don't seem to realise that we are at war."

One man, however, thought it well to give the inexperienced a little warning. He was a wounded soldier who was travelling in a train. At a point on the line where it ran parallel with the road he saw a brand new Territorial battalion marching up to the front, He stuck his bandaged head out of the door and yelled, "Are you dahn'earted?" The Terriers, from the colonel to the smallest drummer, shouted, "No-o-oh!" The wounded man replied, "Well, you —— soon will be when you get in those trenches."

When they were being heavily shelled a regiment shouted to their comrades in some distant trenches, "Are we downhearted?" A pause ensued, then a bloody spectre raised himself from a trench, shouted "No!" with a last breath and fell back dead.