The louie asked him where he was hit at the Front and the doughboy replied that he wasn’t hit at the front at all. The louie thought he was trying to be funny, but the man insisted that he was “hit in the rear, sir.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the officer. “An accident? Then you aren’t wounded—just injured. Here in the S.O.S.”
“No, sir,” replied the man, “I turned around to see where my lieutenant was and the next thing I knew I was in a first aid station.”
The officer was puzzled, but thought he saw the light. “Cold feet, eh? Your commanding officer had to stop you from running away, eh?”
“Say—” says the man, insulted, “we was at the Front goin’ across, I tell ya—an’ I hear somebody yell something behind me. I thought it was the lieutenant an’ I turned around to see. Just then something hit me in the rear and here I am.”
“Oh—” says the louie. “You mean in the back, which was to the front!”
“Sure—in the rear,” repeated the other doggedly.
“Oh!” says the louie and walks away, while the man cursed after him for being so dumb.
That isn’t so funny in print, but it surely did sound funny the way that fellow told it.
I guess the joke that was best known and had the most variations in the whole army was the old one about the man in the hospital being interrogated by a kindly woman visitor who insisted upon knowing where he was wounded. I heard about a hundred variations of this story: every man you met had a new twist to it, so I guess it qualifies as the A.E.F. joke. Of all the endings, however, I think the best one is that in which the wounded man finally replies, “Madame, if you was hit where I was hit, you wouldn’t a’ been hit at all!” Maybe it seemed so funny to me because I’m a girl myself, but it’s a good story anyway and is representative of the brand of Rabelaisian humor that bloomed in this man’s army. And the wounded men were the worst ones for telling stories. I heard a verse of “Parley Vous” from one, about a Mademoiselle from Bar-le-Duc, which was positively putrid—it was so utterly vile that it took me two days to figure out just what it meant. I couldn’t even write it in shorthand!