CHEERFULNESS
Something that is noticed by all who
have served at the front is the drollery of
the men in dangerous or uncomfortable
surroundings. Sometimes it is good-natured,
sometimes ill-tempered and critical, but it is
ever present. One cannot but believe that the
wag of the company is better than a tonic to
the men, in fact is almost as good a pick-me-up
as the rum ration. Who has not felt the benefit
of a good laugh? Who has not seen a well-developed
sense of humor save a difficult situation,
or at least alleviate it?
With Tommy the humor crops out in the
most unexpected situations. Under circumstances
in which the ordinary man would turn
ghastly pale, Tommy cracks a joke. Crossing
an open space toward a railway embankment
I was fifty yards or so from a culvert through
which I had intended passing, when a soldier
reached it. He was carrying a load on his
back, and was sucking on a pipe, his head
bowed in thought. A whizz bang shrieked by
me, and struck just at the entrance to the
culvert, missing him only by inches. Fortunately
it banged into the earth four or five feet
beyond his position at the moment, so that the
fragments spread from him, not towards him.
He had escaped death by a hairbreadth. He
stopped in his path, took his pipe from his
mouth, raised his head and looked with a
surprised air at the hole in the ground made by
the bursting shell. His only comment was
uttered in a slow voice:
"Well, I'll--be--jiggered!" And putting
his pipe back into his mouth, he coolly resumed
his walk and his meditation, without altering
his course by one inch. Thus do men come to
accept narrow escapes from death as a matter
of course, where such escapes are as common as
is plum jam in the rations.
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The men are plodding along in thick tenacious
mud, carrying sixty-pound trench mortars,
each foot with its accumulated mud weighing
at least twenty pounds, and feeling as if it
weighed a ton. They are sweating, and blowing,
and tired. They halt for a rest and lean
up against the wet, muddy wall of the trench,
carelessly chucking the heavy mortars into the
mud. Then the wag begins by cursing the
bally war, consigning the officers to perdition,
condemning the food as unfit for "villyuns,"
and wishing the Kaiser "wuz in 'ell." "And
the blighters hexpect hus to stand an' face the
henemy. An' ye betcher life we'll do it too,
coz we couldn't run if we want to: we're stuck
in the mud!" A smile passes along the tired
faces; their rest is over, and more or less
rejuvenated, they take up their burdens and pass
on.
--------
Coming out of the front lines one day when
we were relieved by another battalion, my
corporal and I were going along a support trench
when we came up with some officers of our
battalion who were leaning against the parapet,
waiting for the Germans to let up shelling the
trench twenty-five yards in advance of us.
We joined the other officers, and were soon
joined by about sixty men who were trying to
get out the same way. The Germans were
persistent, so we all finally turned back to go out
by another trench. The shells followed us
along the trench, for which reason none of us
slackened our pace. As we hurried along a
rich Scotch voice said loudly enough for all to
hear:
"By G----, these Hun shells are better than
the pipes to make us march."
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Passing along a muddy support trench,
returning from a tour of inspection, we came
upon a fatigue or working party of soldiers
digging an ammunition dump. They were
working on a ridge, and as it was a bright day
they could be seen much of the time by the
German snipers and might at any moment get some
shells or bullets thrown into their midst. It
was hard, dirty and dangerous work, but
bantering voices reached us:
"What did you do in the great war, papa?"
asks one.
"I dug 'oles, m'son," replies another.
"But that's not as bad as 'avin' 'oles dug in
ye," adds a third.
"You're bally-well right, it's not," says a
fourth. And the work proceeds.
--------
Humor, of course, is not limited to the ordinary
ranks, O.R.'s as they are called officially.
Our battalion was putting on a big raid, "a
show." In the end it was carried out very
successfully, but owing to the fact that it was a
daylight raid, and that a smoke barrage was
to be employed, the wind had to be taken into
account, and the raid was put off from time to
time. Code words had to be arranged to be
telephoned by brigade to the battalion. Codes
are employed because of the danger of the
Germans picking up the messages by a special
apparatus for that purpose. An English officer
present at the meeting to discuss plans
suggested the following code which was employed:
If the raid was to be indefinitely postponed
the word _Asquith_ was to be used, meaning,
wait and see. The word _Haldane_ was
employed with the signification, put off until
tomorrow. And when it was finally decided to
be put on, _Lloyd George_ was the code word
which meant, to be carried out at once.
Anyone familiar with British politics during
the war will agree that it was rather a neat
code.
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And it is said that a French Canadian
commanding officer, in whose battalion a murder
had been committed, had inserted in his orders
of the day the following bit of unconscious humor:
"It is to be regretted that a murder has been
committed in this battalion. This is the second
murder in our Canadian forces. It is to be
distinctly understood that this pernicious habit
must cease forthwith."
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Many amusing stories are told of the contents
of letters censored at the front. Usually
all the letters of a company or section are
censored by the officers of the company or section.
One of the best stories was told me by an English
officer. A Tommy of his section wrote to
his beloved:
"Dear Maggie: I'd a bally sight rather be in
your arms than in this trench with a dead German!"
--------
I sat one evening smoking a cigar with a
Canadian Colonel who was much incensed at
the fact that he had served at Gallipoli where
he caught an infectious diarrhea of which he
nearly died, while in the meantime his other
officers who served no better than he were
decorated and promoted.
"Manion," he said to me in an angry voice,
"I was promised that if I went to the Mediterranean
I would get promotion and any decoration
they could get for me, and the only d----
thing I got was dysentery, and I wouldn't have
got that if my superior officers had had the
giving of it."
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A rather good story with a touch of dry
humor provoked by a desire for justice is that
of the lonesome soldier. One of our Tommies
sent an advertisement to an English daily in
which he hinted, rather than said, that he was
a duty-loving Briton, honorably doing his bit,
and being without friends in the world he
would welcome a correspondence with some
English girl. He implied that, as the diet was
rough, a few comforts would not go amiss,
signing his advertisement, "H.H., a lonesome
soldier." He was rewarded by a mail large
enough for Horatio Bottomley, accompanied
by so many parcels that our mail department
had to add another man to its staff to handle
his portion. Instead of imitating the generosity
of these English girls, and sharing his
ill-gotten gains with his companions, he chose the
selfish part, keeping most of the good things
for himself, giving away only what he had no
possible use for. And what was still worse,
he started a correspondence with each of the
priceless young things who had offered him
their goods and their friendship. Had this
been a fair and square correspondence it might
have had nothing to condemn it. But though
uneducated, he was sly enough to suit his
letters to their recipients. To one he implied the
possibility of a strong attachment; to another
he was more reserved, speaking only of friendship;
while to a third he would send a warm,
date-making epistle, hinting at cozy hotels;
all according to what he thought their letters
to him showed him of their characters.
This went on for some time, the lonesome
soldier writing many letters daily, all franked
by a kindly government, and all to be censored
by a group of H.Q. officers. The friendships
he had worked up were getting more friendly,
the intrigues deeper, and the passions warmer,
when Major E---- decided that in fairness to
the young women and in justice to the wily
Tommy he would put an end to this planning
and plotting. So, in censoring the letters
Major E---- saw that the warm, passionate
letter to "My Beloved Maisie" was, by mistake,
of course, put into the envelope of "Dear Miss
Jones;" Miss Jones' letter put into that of
"Darling Kiddo," and the latter's into "My
Own Emmey's," and so on. The result was a
rapid cessation of the letters and parcels to
the lonesome soldier, and the straightening out
of what otherwise might have been an
interminable tangle. To the really lonesome
soldier--and there are such--all consideration is
due, but to such a one as this may justice
arrive swiftly, as it did to him.
Potash is a North American Indian. He
was chief of his tribe, is very intelligent, well
educated, and the best sharpshooter in his
battalion. His intelligence is proven by the fact
that he has never indulged in alcoholic drink,
nor has he in any other manner allowed his
close association with us whites of Canada to
deprave him. In other words, he is a living
refutation of the remark that the only good
Indian is a dead Indian. If it were not for
the copper tinge to his skin, one would take
him for what he is,--a well-informed, educated
North American. He is very proud of the
fact that Sir Wilfrid Laurier, when Premier
of Canada, presented to him and his bride at
their wedding a silver tea set.
Being the only Indian in his battalion he is
treated with a good deal of consideration by
all. Colonel Blank stood chatting to him one
day, the center of a group of officers.
"You are an Indian, Potash. Tell me why
it is that alcohol has such a bad effect upon
Indians in general."
"You know, Sir," seriously replied Potash,
"that alcohol acts principally on the tissues of
the brain. And so, the Indians having more
brains than the whites, alcohol has a greater
effect on them." The colonel and Potash
joined in the general laugh.
--------
Often shells do not explode, and Tommy
calls them "duds," but up to the declaration of
war by the United States in April last, these
duds often got the nickname, "American
shells--too proud to fight."
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In the lines one often finds evidence of a
prejudice against officers of the staff--nicknamed
"Brass Hats" by the boys--this prejudice
being due to the fact that Tommy looks
upon staff jobs as being safety-first positions,
and that the man in the line thinks, rightly or
wrongly, that too many young fellows who
should be doing their bit under fire remain at
the rear through family pull or connection.
There is also the impression that many of the
staff only get under fire when they absolutely
have to. Of course this is a much exaggerated
idea, but that it exists is shown by the
following humorous conversation overheard in the
lines:
"Say, Bill, did you hear that peace has been
declared?"
"Naw; nothin' to it; hot air; no sich luck."
"Sure it has. Didn't ye see those two Brass
Hats goin' along the trenches just now?"
The Tommies call their helmets "tin hats,"
and on a certain occasion one soldier was heard
to ask another if he thought a tin hat as safe
as a Brass Hat.
Of course in a war such as that of today mistakes
are inevitable at times. Occasionally
battalions or companies are ordered to accomplish
the impossible. The Charge of the Light
Brigade has repeated itself more than once, and
the staff get the credit, or discredit, for these
mistakes. Sometimes it is the orders which
cause the wag of the company to speak of these
officers with his fine contempt. Everyone has
seen Bairnsfather's picture of a subaltern
under heavy fire in the front line, and at the same
time having to answer a telephone message as
to how many cans of apple jam had been sent
in the rations in the past week. It seemed, no
doubt, a ridiculous exaggeration, but is no more
ridiculous than an order which came through
one day to test out a certain rat poison, a
sample of which accompanied the order. The
battalion receiving this command was at the time
holding a very bad bit of line where the
Germans did much sniping and dropping over of
pineapples, rum jars, whizz bangs, and so
forth. The battalion was to test this poison
with particular reference to the following
points:
1. Adequacy of eight tins per 1,000 yards
of trench.
2. Amount of bait consumed.
3. Number of sick or dead rats seen.
4. Post-mortem examination of dead rats.
5. As to diminution of rat population,
"staleness of rat holes might be taken as
corroborative evidence of diminution."
Then followed three foolscap pages of typewritten
directions along this line. (Foolscap
in the foregoing is not intentionally sarcastic.)
Do you wonder that the men made jokes?
Imagine, if you can, a battalion under very
heavy fire night and day trying to carry out
tests that might easily be carried out behind
the lines as to the efficiency of a rat poison.
Imagine a Medical Officer, while not attending
the wounded or sick, doing post-mortem
examinations of dead rats, or estimating "the
staleness of rat holes," with, perhaps, a
German sniper trying to get a bead on him!
Of course such an order as this, written by
some theorist in a comfortable room two or
three hundred miles from the bursting shells,
would usually be stopped by the practical men
of the staff. When one has inadvertently
filtered through, as in this case, can those in the
lines be blamed for talking about foolkillers?
As is to be expected, the order was ignored
until the battalion some time later received a
reminder. They protested that this test was
surrounded by too many difficulties, and were told
to "try it on a small scale."
The gruff voice of the Regimental Sergeant
Major said that he supposed they would send
up "some small scale rats to try it on." As
they were not forthcoming, that is as far as the
order got.
But though Staff Officers are disliked
almost as much as Medical Officers, Tommy
must bear with them, even if it be with a poorly
disguised sneer of disgust and tolerance; for
an army without a staff would be as incredible
and undesirable as sick and wounded without
attention. No doubt, in spite of Tommy's
humor and banter, when the truth is told, both of
the above types perform their duties as ably
as they can according to their lights.
--------
While dining with the officers of C Company
one evening, I heard two of that company's
likable young subalterns arguing as to
whether the rum ration, so popular with most
of the men out there on cold winter nights,
would, after the war, conduce to temperance in
the nation. The argument grew quite hot, as
it often did there, and one of the debaters stuck
his helmet on his head, and strode to the
entrance of the dugout where he turned and
clinched the argument with the sneering remark:
"By gad, Smith, you know less about more
things than any other man I've ever met," then
made a victorious exit.
And speaking of the rum ration, an old soldier
once told me that, being the oldest man in
his platoon, the serving out of the rum usually
fell to his lot, whereupon he always took from
his haversack a little tin vessel which held just
the right amount for each man, thus showing
his absolute fairness and impartiality. But,
as he poured the liquor into the little cup, he
kept his thumb on the inside, so that at the end
of serving some thirty or forty of his comrades
he had thirty or forty "thumbs" of the beverage
left as his portion--a form of humor, no
doubt, better appreciated by himself than it
would have been by the rest of his platoon, had
they known how absolutely (im-) partial he
always was, to himself.