It was the tender hearts of the British soldiers, as well as their coolness and courage, that made the old women and little children take to them as they marched through France. "Cheer up, mother," one soldier shouted, and another covered a shivering old woman with his coat. A French woman's clothes had been taken by the Germans, so a Highlander tore his kilt and gave her part of it for a covering.
The children took hold of the hands of the brave Allies, or tried to get a ride on their shoulders.
A British sergeant went into a French farm house that had been shelled by the Germans. He found that all the family had been killed "except a little girl of about seven years, and she was just conscious. Both her legs had been blown away near the knees, and one of her arms was missing from below the elbow. The rain was coming down into the wreckage, and I took off my greatcoat and wrapped the poor, moaning child in it. I sat down on the floor to hold her on my knee, and she just opened her eyes and gave me a grateful look. Then she moved her sound arm, and the next thing I found she had lifted something to my head, and it slipped over my shoulders. Her arm dropped. She was dead. She had given me her rosary. I thought I had a heart of stone, but I cried like a child that night, and I wasn't the only one."
And our soldiers were most thoughtful about those belonging to them whom they had left at home. A sergeant thus wrote of a brawny Yorkshireman who had lost his regiment: "His chief grievance was that he had not been able to write and tell his wife where he was and how he was getting on. 'Tha' sees, lad,' he remarked in perfect seriousness, 'th' missus knows that now and then I drink one or two more glasses than's good for me, and she'll be gettin' anxious.' A few days before he had been in a terrifically hot engagement, yet the only thing that worried him was the fear that the 'missus' might be anxious about what he called the 'teetotal lay'!"
Private F.W. Dobson, 2nd Coldstream Guards, wrote this to his wife:
"It is with the greatest pleasure that I write this letter, as it is our wedding anniversary—September 30th. I only hope we shall spend the next one together. You will know by the time you receive this letter that I have been recommended for the V.C.—an honour I never thought would come my way. In fact, I do not yet realise that it is possible. I only took my chance, and did my duty to save my comrades. It was really nothing, but I shall never forget the congratulations and praise I received from our officers, my comrades, and a Brigadier-General."
A sergeant of the 18th Hussars ended a letter to his wife with these "home-sick" words: "Oh for a cup of tea with you. Your worst cup of tea would come in very nice now."
Private O'Dwer, of the Irish Guards, said in a letter from the front to his wife: "It was a great relief to hear from you. I was just having my tea during a lull when I got your letter, and didn't I enjoy my tea much better. On Tuesday last I escaped by a miracle from a bomb thrown from an aeroplane. It did no damage, only made a very large hole in the ground just where we were digging trenches."
Scrawled on the back of this letter which appeared in The Evening News, was the following: