After marching and fighting nearly every day we are all feeling like
veterans now, and we are ready to keep the ball rolling for just as
long as it takes to give the Kaiser’s lads a lesson in soldiering
that is likely to be remembered in their precious Fatherland so long
as there are Germans alive. We are not kidding ourselves about what
we have before us, but we are bracing ourselves for it, and we will
certainly put our best foot forward and get our backs into the work
as you would expect British soldiers to do. This is going to be the
biggest thing we’ve ever taken on, and there’ll be many an English home
in mourning before it’s through; but you simply must make up your minds
to face it as bravely as we are facing it, because that’s the only way
to win, and we’re out to win at any price. We can’t and we won’t allow
the Germans to get the best of us in this fight, and they will have to
trample on our dead bodies first before they get a chance of trampling
on our flag, as they say they will. The dead won’t all be Britons, and
we have no doubt about who’s going to win, if it takes us a century to
do it: _Private S. Hobson_.
Spared!
In the hospital there were twenty wounded, including three Germans,
in charge of an English doctor. After our troops had retired to their
base, some distance in the rear, the hospital was raided by a party of
fifty Germans. They were all more or less under the influence of drink,
and they demanded that we should tell them where our regiment was. Not
one of us would give the game away, and they thereupon said they would
shoot us all. They commenced flourishing their revolvers and shouting,
and I can tell you that I began to shake. I was really afraid then, and
I thought our numbers were up. But the unexpected happened. The three
wounded Germans implored their comrades to spare us, pointing out that
they had been most kindly treated by the English doctor: _A Private of
the Hussars_.
Jolly Boys are We!
I am sitting on the grass in a huge encampment of some thousands of men
who, despite all kinds of adverse circumstances, are still as jolly as
the proverbial skylark. It is quite remarkable to see the philosophical
way in which Tommy takes everything. Here is a little example which
may, perhaps, be amusing to some of the Merrie Villagers next Sunday.
A huge field, inches thick in mud, nice clay soil, which hangs on to
you like grim death; wet shirts, due to a steady downpour all night;
no tea for breakfast, owing to the rain having put all fires out; and
the troops sitting as best they can on their waterproof sheets on wet
earth, doing what? Why, singing, at the top of their voices, “It’s a
long, long way to Tipperary!”: _Bombdr. Barron, of Finsbury Park_.
The “Born Grousers”
Just now we suffer more from the plague of spies than we did from
flies in South Africa. “Kill that spy” is a cry as necessary as “Kill
that fly” at home. Scarcely a day passes without the arrest of Germans
or Austrians engaged in their low trade. They get short shrift. A chap
can’t be sorry for them; they are such dirty dogs. They are going about
circulating lies of all kinds. One of their yarns is to tell of whole
regiments wiped out. Sometimes it is a French regiment and sometimes a
British one. One of the kidney tried it on in a café here to-night. He
made free with the name of a regiment actually quartered here. When we
had done with him he had practical proof that this scurvy German method
of killing off your enemies is only satisfactory so long as you can
avoid a meeting with the “killed and wounded.” We are all comfortable
here, and there is no shortage of any kind, so if you hear from the
born “grousers” of hardships don’t believe them: _Corporal G. Robbins_.