The British soldier

by E. J. Hardy

Writing of a wound, a sporting soldier said: "The next day, when partridge shooting was beginning at home, sure enough I was 'winged' among the turnips."

Another man said that when the shrapnel came it seemed as big as a motor-'bus and to hit him all over. "The shells were like small beer barrels in the air."

An Irish soldier wrote: "We charged the Kaiser's crush with a yell that would have put the fear of death into the heart of the most stoical, and with our bayonets we dug them out of their trenches, same as you'd dig bully beef out of a can."

An Irish soldier remarked to an interviewer when asked what the war was like: "There ain't anything to talk about. It's fight, an' march, an' fight again, with maybe a crack on the 'ead once in a while. It is the biggest rifle meeting I ever saw—Bisley isn't in it."

The rain that fell in September in the trenches, he said, was so heavy that it was like as if the earth had been turned upside down and water had been poured in at the other side.

Another remark was that he had slept so much in odd places that now he thought he could sleep on a clothes-line.

Another soldier who slept in odd places was Lance-Corporal Waller, of the 4th Royal Fusiliers: "I have slept with strange company since I came out. One night with sheep, another in a schoolroom, once on top of a pigsty, once in a manger, in several ditches, in a first-class drawing-room, in 4 inches of snow, behind the counter of a café, and in a feather bed."

A gunner thus described the work of his battery: "We just rained shells on the Germans until we were deaf and choking. I don't think a gun on the position could have sold for old iron after we had finished, and the German gunners would be just odd pieces of clothing and bits of accoutrement."

One of the Black Watch wrote: "We have had a fiendish week of fighting around A——. We had to force our way step by step. Every inch we marched was coloured red with the blood of our men and the Germans. It was like passing through a graveyard where an earthquake had turned up all the corpses and left them lying above ground. As we picked our way through the long lane of dead, that never seemed to have any turning, we noticed among them now and then wounded men, who begged hard for water or some assistance in doing up their bandages. It was pitiful, and we were so helpless."

Another soldier wrote: "You can always tell the Germans who have never been in action against us before. The ones who know what to expect come up very gingerly, like men sneaking into the vestry of a church to rob the collection boxes. The new hands come across in a fine, jaunty way until they get a volley into them, and then they stare up at the sky to see who's throwing things at them. That's the ones who are able to look up, for some of them are done for, and have looked at the sky for the last time. We are showing the Germans that there are a few goods marked 'Made in England.' Our officers are the real goods, the very best. If the Germans had been worth their house-room they would have put an end to the whole of us at the battle of Mons. They came on like a swarm of bees, and we did enjoy it. It was like firing at a mountain; you could not miss it. Sorry I can't stop to write more. We are going to business at 7 p.m. ('Where's my gun?') What would you like out of the crown jewels in Berlin? That's where we are bound for."