I was fetching our bottles of water. I crept to one house. The woman
tried to tell me something in French. I could not understand, so she
pulled me in the next room. There was a woman just confined. She was on
the point of madness. I could not do anything, so I told my officer.
He sent me for the parson, and got some of us together, and we carried
her, bed and all, to a safe place: _Pte. E. Smith, 2nd Worcestershire
Regiment_.
Going Home!
It was wonderful how cheerful the wounded were. One poor fellow who had
been shot in the head, and hit by a shrapnel bullet in the mouth--he
was apparently dying--pointed out to me another man, badly wounded,
remarking, “That poor bloke is going home; he will be gone before me”:
_Pte. W. Webb, Royal Army Medical Corps_.
Like Jackie!
I was in a cottage in France, in the country, Tuesday night, to cook
a bit of grub--we had had none all day--and while I was doing it the
woman cried bitterly, as her husband was at the front, but I tried to
cheer her up as best I could; she had a boy like Jackie, so I told her
I was married and had a wife and child, and she cried worse still then:
_Private Davies, of Ipswich_.
Lit His “Fag”
“Is there anything I can do for you, old chap?” I asked a wounded man
of the Hampshires, one day. “Yes,” he answered, “you might light my fag
for me. You will find matches and all in my inside pocket.” I did as he
asked, and the last glimpse I caught of him he was lying out there with
German shells and bullets flying all around, calmly smoking a “Gold
Flake.” That spirit is characteristic of our lads: _A Private of the
Grenadier Guards_.