Have you ever tried cooking a dinner under shell fire? It’s about as exciting as anything you could have in this world. Yesterday we were in the firing line, and as there were no prospects of relief, we had to make a spit and roast some fowls we had been given by the villagers. Just when they were doing nicely, and we were going around to turn them, the Germans found the range, and shells began to drop all around. We had to lie low, and when there was a lull one of us would rush out and turn the nearest bird, and then run back again under cover. We got them cooked all right, but two of our chaps were killed outright and four injured. That’s a big bill to pay for a dinner; but soldiers are like beggars, they can’t be choosers. Out here is no place for the faint-hearts, and we want only real men, who are afraid of nothing: Pte. T. Bayley, 5th Irish Lancers.
Business as Usual
Our men had just had their papers from home, and have noted, among other things, that “Business as Usual” is the motto of patriotic shopkeepers. In hard fighting the Wiltshires, holding an exposed position, ran out of ammunition, and had to suspend firing until a party brought fresh supplies across the open under a heavy fire. Then the wag of the regiment, a Cockney, produced a biscuit tin with “Business as Usual” crudely printed on it, and set it up before the trenches as a hint to the Germans that the fight could now be resumed on more equal terms. Finally the tin had to be taken in because it was proving such a good target for the German riflemen, but the joker was struck twice in rescuing it: A Private of the Wiltshire Regiment.
For Neuralgia!
We’re just keeping at it in the same old slogging style that always brings us out on top. There’s one chap in our company has got a ripping cure for neuralgia, but he isn’t going to take out a patent, because it’s too risky, and might kill the patient. Good luck’s one of the ingredients, and you can’t always be sure of that. He was lying in the trenches the other day nearly mad with pain in his face, when a German shell burst close by. He wasn’t hit, but the explosion knocked him senseless for a bit. “Me neuralgia’s gone,” says he, when he came round. “And so’s six of your mates,” says we. “Oh, crikey!” says he. His name’s Palmer, and that’s why we call the German shells now “Palmer’s Neuralgia Cure”: Pte. H. Thomson, 1st Gordon Highlanders.
“The Wearin’ o’ the Green!”
The German officer rushed off to Tim Flanagan, the biggest caution in the whole regiment, and called on him to surrender the file of men under his orders. “Is it me your honour’s after talking to in that way?” says Tim in that bold way of his. “Sure, now, it’s yourself that ought to be surrendering, and if you’re not off this very minute, you ill-mannered German omadhaun, it’s me will be after giving you as much cold steel as’ll do you between this and the kingdom of heaven.” Then the German officer gave the word to his men, and what happened after that I can’t tell to you, for it was just then I got a bullet between my ribs; but I can tell you that neither Tim nor any of his men surrendered: A Private of the Connaught Rangers.
Not a Yarn
A barber would do a roaring trade if he came here, no one having shaved for weeks. Consequently, beards vary according to the age of the individual and the length of time he has not shaved. Mine, for instance, is something to gaze on and remember. They are not by any means what a writer in a lady’s novelette would describe as “a perfect dream.” They are scattered over my chivvy-chase in anything but order, nineteen on one side, fifteen on the other, and thirty-five on the chin, intermixed with a small smattering of down and dirt. Dirt, did I say? That doesn’t describe it. Water is at a discount, except for drinking: soap something to read about, and you wonder when you last used it, and when you will use it again. I can safely say, “Three weeks ago I used your soap; since then I have used no other.” And that’s not spinning you a yarn: Sergt. Diggins, Leicestershire Regiment.