After relating many pitiful, tear-compelling incidents of wounded
and dying soldiers in trench and in the temporary hospitals back of
the front, an English Chaplain turned from the saddening episodes to
some of the humorous phases of his experience among the men—humorous
by contrast, that is, for some of the touches are more than prods to
laughter; this for example:
“Once, in a hospital train, where a crowd of helpless men were
being loaded in at a siding, I saw one man, groaning in agony from
rheumatism, carried in. ‘Where are you wounded, old chap?’ asked the
orderly. ‘Hoots!’ he replied, ‘I’m na wounded at a’; fling me onywhere,
an’ luk after the rest.’” The Chaplain continues:
“There are countless streaks of humor and gleams of laughter even
amid the sorrow-clouds of war. The mysterious diseases from which the
soldier thinks he suffers sometimes puzzle you. He will proudly, and
with a majestic solemnity, tell you that his illness has developed into
‘gasteria’—perhaps a more accurately descriptive name than science
recognizes. More than one is sorry for his wife, who is distracted and
harrowed by the ‘insinuendoes’ of her neighbors, a word almost worthy
of a place in the dictionary. And many will tell you of chums who have
broken down, and who were not really fit to serve, having been always
of a ‘historical’ tendency. One almost feels a plea for heredity there.
“How grateful we were when we found occasions like these! For, though
we were not downhearted, we were often war-weary. And frequently the
good cheer of those whom we were there to comfort and strengthen really
strengthened and comforted us.