The British soldier

by E. J. Hardy

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 Post correspondent wrote: "I saw a colonel yesterday who has been invalided three times. He had seven bullet wounds, and had lost two 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."