Not Downhearted
Frequently in the midst of a heavy German fire some British joker would
shout, "Are we downhearted?" and this would be loudly answered in the
negative by all British soldiers near him. Certainly that soldier was
not downhearted who pasted "Business as Usual" on a biscuit tin, and
stuck it on top of his trench for the enlightenment of the enemy.
The Hampshire Regiment, when advancing against the Germans, sang "Pop
goes the Weasel" as each shell burst.
Another regiment went into battle shouting, "Early doors this way.
Early doors ninepence." They were all as cheerful as if they were going
to a football match. One soldier said that he got his wound because
he became too excited to take cover when arguing about the relative
qualities of two famous boxers.
Two soldiers in the trenches when shells were bursting round them
played marbles with bullets from a shrapnel shell.
On one occasion our men, though being fired at by artillery, were
kicking about a football. A German aviator who observed this sent in a
report that the British forces were thoroughly disorganised and running
about their post in blind alarm.
Many men remarked casually in their letters that the letters were
written with bullets and shrapnel flying round. One soldier told his
mother that his letter was deferred "because the Germans were trying
to worry us," but added, "Do not believe half the stories about our
hardships. I haven't seen or heard of a man who made complaint of
anything. You can't expect a six-course dinner on active service, but
we get plenty to fight on."
A _Times_ correspondent told how he asked a wounded British soldier who
was sitting on the roadside if his wound hurt him. He replied, "It's
not that, but I'm blest if I haven't lost my pipe in that last charge."
The same correspondent saw a number of British soldiers come to Paris
after a "terrible tussle" with the enemy, and said that they looked as
if they had arrived from a day's holiday on Hampstead Heath, for though
dusty, they were trim and smiling, and seemed to be fit for anything.
The excitable Parisians admired the way Mr. Thomas Atkins took
everything as a matter of course and accommodated himself to
circumstances. They shrieked with admiration when they saw two
Highlanders with arms wounded dance a reel on a railway platform.
In another part of France a train full of British soldiers arrived. A
Frenchman said to some of them, "Bravo! You have done splendid work, I
hope that you will soon get home." "Home, sir?" replied a gunner, "why
we're just getting warmed up for work. It took us a few weeks to get
used to it, but now we love it and are as fit as fiddles."
"What is it like at the front?" a private of the Royal Irish Fusiliers
was asked in a hospital in England. "Well, now it's hard to tell you
that unless you've been there, but, faith, I'll make a good try,
just to oblige you. It's very little different from what goes on at
home. The day's made up of grousing and fighting, except that instead
of fighting among ourselves it's the Germans we fight. Maybe the
grousing's a bit different, too, from what it is in peace time. The
Englishmen swear most when the meals aren't all they might be, but the
Scotch and the Irish are mostly angered because the German devils won't
come out and fight so's we can give them the cold iron. The English
don't seem to mind that so much, so long as they have full stomachs
and can keep firing away at the Germans with the big guns and the
rifles."
Corporal Graham Hodson, Royal Engineers, wrote to his parents: "I am
feeling awfully well, and am enjoying myself no end. Oh, it's a great
life!" So little downhearted were his men that an officer, after
observing them, said admiringly, "You are a lively lot of beggars. You
don't seem to realise that we are at war."
One man, however, thought it well to give the inexperienced a little
warning. He was a wounded soldier who was travelling in a train. At a
point on the line where it ran parallel with the road he saw a brand
new Territorial battalion marching up to the front, He stuck his
bandaged head out of the door and yelled, "Are you dahn'earted?" The
Terriers, from the colonel to the smallest drummer, shouted, "No-o-oh!"
The wounded man replied, "Well, you ---- soon will be when you get in
those trenches."
When they were being heavily shelled a regiment shouted to their
comrades in some distant trenches, "Are we downhearted?" A pause
ensued, then a bloody spectre raised himself from a trench, shouted
"No!" with a last breath and fell back dead.
It is a curious fact in the Army that the harder the conditions the
more cheerful the men are. When everything is all right there is
grumbling, but as soon as things are bad they all get as happy as
sand-boys.
The "wild pulsation of strife" seems to be a "rapture" to some, and
that soldier no doubt meant what he said when he wrote to his parents,
"You can't believe how happy I was fighting the Germans. I felt as if I
were in a football match."
A wounded soldier said that there was a fascination in battle that made
him wish to be in one again. "You forget all fear, everybody is full of
excitement. You hardly think of your funeral."
An officer wrote, after describing the terrible marches our troops
had to make in their strategic retirement to the neighbourhood of
Paris: "Our long ordeal came to a sudden end. For reasons we could
not understand the Germans were retreating on our left and forsaking
the tempting bait of Paris. On September 5th we got the order to
advance, and instantly new life flowed into our veins. It is amazing
how speedily we forget our fatigue and the mental and physical horrors
we had gone through. Though their feet were sore and many of them
bleeding, the men stepped back to the Marne singing, 'It's a long, long
way to Tipperary,' or the new version, 'It's a wrong, wrong way to
tickle Mary.'"
Sir Douglas Haig, the General who led so well in the retreat, had
good reason for saying, "We have had hardish times, but nothing in our
history has surpassed the fine soldierly qualities displayed by the
troops."