Cigarettes we knew not; food was scarce, so was ammunition.
Consequently I was detailed on the eve of the retreat from Serbia to
collect boxes of S.A.A. lying near the front line.
On the way to report my arrival to the infantry officer I found a
Cockney Tommy badly wounded in the chest. "It's me chest, ain't it,
mate?" he asked. I nodded in reply. "Then I'll want corf drops, not
them," and with that he handed me a packet of cigarettes. How he got
them and secretly saved them up so long is a mystery.
I believe he knew that he would not require either cough drops or
cigarettes, and I took a vow to keep the empty packet to remind me of
the gallant fellow.--_H. R. (late R.F.A.), 10th Division, London, N.3._
"Smiler" to the End
When Passchendaele started on July 31, 1917, we who were holding ground
captured in the Messines stunt of June 7 carried out a "dummy" attack.
One of the walking wounded coming back from this affair of bluff,
I struck a hot passage, for Jerry was shelling the back areas with
terrific pertinacity. Making my way to the corduroy road by Mount
Kemmel, I struck a stretcher party. Their burden was a rifleman of
the R.B.'s, whose body was a mass of bandages. Seeing me ducking and
dodging every time a salvo burst near he called out:
"Keep wiv me, mate, 'cos two shells never busts in the same 'ole--and
if I ain't a shell 'ole 'oo is?"
Sheer grit kept him alive until after we reached Lord Derby's War
Hospital outside Warrington, and the nickname of "Smiler" fitted him to
the last.--_W. G. C., 2 Avonly Road, S.E.14._
"The Bishop" and the Bright Side
A fully-qualified chartered accountant in the City, my pal, "The
Bishop"--so called because of his dignified manner--was promoted
company-clerk in the Irish Rifles at Messines in 1917.
Company headquarters were in a dark and dismal barn where the Company
Commander and "The Bishop" were writing under difficulties one
fine morning--listening acutely to the shriek and crash of Jerry's
whizz-bangs just outside the ramshackle door.
The betting was about fifty to one on a direct hit at any moment. The
skipper had a wary eye on "The Bishop"--oldish, shortish, stoutish,
rather comical card in his Tommy's kit. Both were studiously preserving
an air of outward calm.
Then the direct hit came--high up, bang through the rafters, and blew
off the roof. "The Bishop" looked up at the sky, still clutching his
fountain-pen.
"Ah, that's better, sir," he said. "Now we can see what we are
doing."--_P. J. K., Westbourne Grove, W.2._
"Chuck yer Blinkin' 'Aggis at 'im!"
The Cockney inhabitants of "Brick Alley," at Carnoy, on the Somme in
1916, had endured considerable attention from a German whizz-bang
battery situated a mile or so away behind Trones Wood.
During a lull in the proceedings a fatigue party of "Jocks," each
carrying a 40-lb. sphere, the business end of a "toffee-apple" (trench
mortar bomb), made their appearance, and were nicely strung out in the
trench when Jerry opened out again.
The chances of a direct hit made matters doubly unpleasant.
The tension became a little too much for one of the regular billetees,
and from a funk-hole in the side of the trench a reproachful voice
addressed the nearest Highlander: "For the luv o' Mike, Jock, get up
and chuck yer blinkin' 'aggis at 'em."--_J. C. Whiting (late 8th Royal
Sussex Pioneers), 36 Hamlet Gardens, W.6._