There’s very little chance for any of the showy kind of fighting that
gets into the papers and delights the girls. It’s simply dull, dreary
work in the trenches, where there’s more mud than glory and more chills
on the liver than cheers. This war will be won by the men who can put
up with the most of that sort of thing, and we have got to grin and
bear it right to the end. I must say that, though it’s not what they
like best, our chaps are keeping at it pretty well, and they won’t be
easily worn out at this game: _Pte. G. Turner, Hampshire Regiment_.
What Thinks the Kaiser?
What do you think of our army now? I wonder what the Kaiser thinks
about it? His famous crushing machine turns out to be an easily
demoralized crowd of automatic soulless clods who don’t know the
meaning of individual effort and efficiency. Take away their driving
power, the fear of their brutal officers, and they stand a useless mass
of brainless, bewildered men. They have a certain amount of pluck, but
they don’t know how to put it to account: _A Manchester Soldier_.
Professional!
German prisoners are a good deal more friendly than they were. I think
they are coming to see we are not the fiends we were painted, and,
besides, many of their men are sick of the whole business. All classes
of society are found in the ranks as private soldiers, and one of the
toughest customers I have had through my hands was a professor of
music at one of the universities. He was quite young, in spite of his
position, and he fought like a tiger. His hatred of us was shown in
every way possible. He had lived in London for some time and knew our
language well: _Sergeant T. Whelan_.
“Cracking Up!”
I am not at all surprised to find the Germans cracking up before the
swift advance of the Allies. They gave us the impression at first
that they were in too big a hurry to keep going for long at a time,
but I suppose haste is part of the method of waging war. The Germans
themselves are not very terrible as fighters. It is the strangeness
of their methods and the up-to-date character of their appliances
that count for a great deal. You do not expect to be half blinded
with searchlights when marching at night, and though we get used to
it soon, the horses do not, and I found that we often got into tight
corners through the horses getting terrified at the glare of the light:
_Trooper P. Ryan, 4th Dragoon Guards_.