An infantry chap found a table and, scoring lines on it with his bayonet, joined in a game of “shove-ha’penny” with four other Tommies. The sequel came later, as sequels will. When the party managed to reassemble for another game a shell had smashed the table to smithereens. “My luck’s out wi’ the infernal shove-ha’penny,” said the infantry chap. “I’m blowed if I’ll play any more.” Then he explained that just before the war he was playing for pots of beer in a public-house when the police raided the place. “Now it’s the Germans,” he added bitterly: A Private of the Army Medical Corps.
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You hear some quaint remarks under heavy artillery fire. One day everything was quiet for a bit except for their shells, and one fellow shouted, “Fall in here for your pay, ‘A’ Company,” which caused men and officers to laugh aloud. When once we get under fire we take very little notice of it, for it seems to come natural to us. All we look for is something to shoot at, taking no notice of what our comrades are doing on either side. When ammunition is gone we shout, “Some more souvenirs for the Huns”: Pte. Homewood, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry.
“Mein Gott!”
A funny thing happened about a week ago. The scout officer of our regiment went out reconnoitring one night and rather lost his bearings. As he thought he was on his way back he bumped up against a trench which he took for his own, and started to walk along it till he came to someone, obviously an officer, walking up and down. “Hullo! Good evening,” he said; when the other officer, jumping back, said, “Mein Gott, the English!” and before he had got over his surprise the scout officer jumped out of the trench and got away without being hit: A British Scout.
“Tickets, Please!”
There’s a corporal of a regiment that I won’t name who was a ticket-collector on the railway before the war, and when he was called back to the colours he wasn’t able to forget his old trade. One day he was in charge of a patrol that surprised a party of Germans in a wood, and, instead of a usual call to surrender, he sang out, “Tickets, please!” The Germans seemed to understand what he was driving at, for they surrendered at once, but that chap will never hear the end of the story, for when everything else ceases to amuse in the trenches, you have only to shout out, “Tickets, please!” to set everybody in fits: A Gunner of the Royal Artillery.
No Uhlans Need Apply!
We were about as hungry as men could be when we came on a party of Uhlans just about to sit down to a nice dinner which had been prepared for them at a big house. They looked as if they had had too much of a good time lately and wanted thinning down; so we took them prisoners, and let them watch us enjoying their dinner. They didn’t like it at all, and one of them muttered something about an English pig. The baby of the troop asked him to come outside to settle it with fists, but he wasn’t having it. After the best dinner I’ve had in my life we went round to where the Uhlans had commandeered the supplies and offered to pay, but the people were so pleased that we had got the food instead of the Germans that they wouldn’t hear of payment: Trooper Dale, Royal Dragoons.