We enjoy the hard life all right because it’s full up with excitement, and we are doing our little bit towards squaring off that big account with the Germans. They’re not doing the fine things they promised to do, and it must make them sick to think of their failure to wipe out our army, for you can take it from me that they had their orders direct from the Kaiser that the British force was to be punished at any cost for daring to come over here without his orders. There’s been punishment enough, God knows, but it hasn’t all been on the one side. There’s many a German could tell of being punished for all he was worth, and they won’t be in a hurry to deal out punishment to us again: Private E. Wood.
The Valiant Spirit
After marching and fighting nearly every day we are all feeling like veterans now, and we are ready to keep the ball rolling for just as long as it takes to give the Kaiser’s lads a lesson in soldiering that is likely to be remembered in their precious Fatherland so long as there are Germans alive. We are not kidding ourselves about what we have before us, but we are bracing ourselves for it, and we will certainly put our best foot forward and get our backs into the work as you would expect British soldiers to do. This is going to be the biggest thing we’ve ever taken on, and there’ll be many an English home in mourning before it’s through; but you simply must make up your minds to face it as bravely as we are facing it, because that’s the only way to win, and we’re out to win at any price. We can’t and we won’t allow the Germans to get the best of us in this fight, and they will have to trample on our dead bodies first before they get a chance of trampling on our flag, as they say they will. The dead won’t all be Britons, and we have no doubt about who’s going to win, if it takes us a century to do it: Private S. Hobson.
Spared!
In the hospital there were twenty wounded, including three Germans, in charge of an English doctor. After our troops had retired to their base, some distance in the rear, the hospital was raided by a party of fifty Germans. They were all more or less under the influence of drink, and they demanded that we should tell them where our regiment was. Not one of us would give the game away, and they thereupon said they would shoot us all. They commenced flourishing their revolvers and shouting, and I can tell you that I began to shake. I was really afraid then, and I thought our numbers were up. But the unexpected happened. The three wounded Germans implored their comrades to spare us, pointing out that they had been most kindly treated by the English doctor: A Private of the Hussars.
Jolly Boys are We!
I am sitting on the grass in a huge encampment of some thousands of men who, despite all kinds of adverse circumstances, are still as jolly as the proverbial skylark. It is quite remarkable to see the philosophical way in which Tommy takes everything. Here is a little example which may, perhaps, be amusing to some of the Merrie Villagers next Sunday. A huge field, inches thick in mud, nice clay soil, which hangs on to you like grim death; wet shirts, due to a steady downpour all night; no tea for breakfast, owing to the rain having put all fires out; and the troops sitting as best they can on their waterproof sheets on wet earth, doing what? Why, singing, at the top of their voices, “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary!”: Bombdr. Barron, of Finsbury Park.
The “Born Grousers”
Just now we suffer more from the plague of spies than we did from flies in South Africa. “Kill that spy” is a cry as necessary as “Kill that fly” at home. Scarcely a day passes without the arrest of Germans or Austrians engaged in their low trade. They get short shrift. A chap can’t be sorry for them; they are such dirty dogs. They are going about circulating lies of all kinds. One of their yarns is to tell of whole regiments wiped out. Sometimes it is a French regiment and sometimes a British one. One of the kidney tried it on in a café here to-night. He made free with the name of a regiment actually quartered here. When we had done with him he had practical proof that this scurvy German method of killing off your enemies is only satisfactory so long as you can avoid a meeting with the “killed and wounded.” We are all comfortable here, and there is no shortage of any kind, so if you hear from the born “grousers” of hardships don’t believe them: Corporal G. Robbins.