The London Bus
Some plucky things have been done by chauffeurs and motor-lorry drivers. It would make some of your London drivers stare to see what they will risk. One of them said this war will cause a revolution in motor driving, as, till now, they never had a chance of seeing what a heavy motor-van could do off a macadamized road. They simply go whereever there is room for them, and more than once they have charged patrol parties who tried to capture them, and got through all right. One driver, seeing that the road was blocked, charged a wooden fence and turf wall, and got out of the way of a lorry that the Germans sent at full speed to smash him. The smashing was on the German lorry. Motorcycles also do wonders. They travel like demons, and rarely get hit: Pte. Watts, Cheshire Regiment.
Putting up with It
Fighting’s kindergarten work compared with lying in your damp clothes in the washed-out trenches night and day, with maybe not a chance of getting any more warmth than you can get from a wax match. That you may have in the day-time, but you’ll get into trouble if you fit it on in the night, when the least sign of light will bring the enemy’s fire down on you, besides the court-martial next day. You’re lying there until you’re as stiff as if you were dead, and your body’s twisted and torn with the pains of rheumatism and lumbago or quinsy, or your whole frame shakes with the ague. That’s the sort of work that tells you whether a man’s made of the right stuff, but you needn’t think there’s any grumbling. Our chaps can put up with that just as well as anybody, and they’ll come through it all right: Pte. Cook, Coldstream Guards.
Rubbing It In
What most of us feel here is that the Germans are staking everything on fighting in France or Belgium, and when they are beaten, as they will be sooner or later, they will howl for peace to save their own country from the horrors of invasion. That’s an idea we have got from their prisoners, and they think it’s a rattling good one. If it were left to the army to settle you may be sure that we’d vote to a man for giving the devils a taste of their own medicine, and you’ll see us crossing their sacred Rhine before long unless you’re the greatest fools in creation. You are only a woman and can’t vote, but for Heaven’s sake rub it in to all the men you know that this is what the army feels about the thing. We wouldn’t make peace with the devils until we’ve rubbed their noses well into the ground of their Fatherland, and we’ll do it yet, even if it costs us a million lives: Lance-Corpl. S. Northcroft, of Wolverhampton.
The Franco-British Team
The great match for the European Cup is still being played out, and I daresay there’s a record gate, though you can’t see the spectators from the field. That’s one of the rules of the game when this match is on. Our team is about as fit as you can have them, and they’re all good men, though some of them are amateurs and the Germans are all “pros.” The German forwards are a rotten pack. They have no dash worth talking about, and they come up the field as though they were going to the funeral of their nearest and dearest. When they are charged they nearly always fall away on to their backs, and their goal-keeping’s about the rottenest thing you ever set eyes on. I wouldn’t give a brass farthing for their chances of lifting the Cup, and if you have any brass to spare you can put it on the Franco-British team, who are scoring goals so fast that we haven’t time to stop and count them. The Kaiser makes a rotten captain for any team, and it’s little wonder they are losing. Most of our side would like to tell him what they think of him and his team: A Gunner of the Royal Field Artillery.