One of the finest exhibitions of Cockney spirit I saw during the war
occurred in Mesopotamia after the Battle of Shaiba (April 1915), in
which we had completely routed the Turkish army.
[Illustration: "Don't drop me in the water, sir. I'm so full of holes
I'd be sure to sink."]
We were busy evacuating the wounded in boats across the six-mile
stretch of water which separated us from Basra. A sergeant who had
been hit by no fewer than six machine-gun bullets was brought down in
a stretcher to be put in one of the boats. As I superintended this
manoeuvre he said to me: "Don't drop me in the water, sir. I'm so full
of holes I'd be sure to sink!"--_F. C. Fraser (Lieut.-Col., Ind. Med.
Service), 309 Brownhill Road, Catford, S.E.6._
Season!
A cockney soldier, badly hit for the third time, was about to be
carried once more on board the ambulance train at Folkestone. When the
bearers came to his stretcher, one said to the other, "What's it say on
his ticket?"
"Season!" said a voice from the stretcher.--_Rev. A. T. Greenwood,
Wallington, Surrey._
Where's the Milk and Honey?
A medical Officer of a London division in Palestine was explaining to
a dying Cockney in his field ambulance at Bethlehem how sorry he was
that he had no special comforts to ease his last moments, when the man,
with a cheery grin, remarked: "Oh, that's all right, sir. Yer reads as
'ow this 'ere 'Oly Land is flowing with milk and 'oney; but I ain't
seen any 'oney myself, and in our battery there's 15 men to a tin o'
milk."--_E. T. Middleton, 32 Denmark Road, West Ealing, W.13._
"Lunnon"
He was my sergeant-major. Having on one occasion missed death literally
by inches, he said coolly: "Them blighters can't 'it 'arf as smart as
my missus when she's roused." I last saw him at Charing Cross Station.
We were both casualties. All the way from Dover he had moaned one
word--"Lunnon." At Charing Cross they laid his stretcher beside mine.
He was half conscious. Suddenly he revived and called out, his voice
boyish and jolly: "Good 'ole Charin' Crawss," and fell back dead.--_G.
W. R., Norwich, Norfolk._
Sparing the M.O.
It was during some open warfare in France. The scene a small room full
of badly wounded men; all the remainder have been hurriedly removed,
or rather, not brought in here. There are no beds; the men lie on the
floor close together.
I rise to stretch my back after dressing one. My foot strikes another
foot. A yell of agony--the foot was attached to a badly shattered thigh.
An insistent, earnest chorus: "You _didn't_ 'urt him, sir. 'E often
makes a noise like that."
I feel a hand take mine, and, looking down, I see it in the grasp of a
man with three gaping wounds. "It _wasn't_ your fault, sir," he says,
in a fierce, hoarse whisper.
And then I realise that not a soul in that room but takes it for
granted that my mental anguish for my stupidity is greater than his own
physical pain, and is doing his best to deaden it for me--one, at any
rate, at great cost to himself.
In whose ranks are the world's great gentlemen?--_"The Clumsy Fool,"
Guy's Hospital, E.C._
"Robbery with Violence"
A Cockney soldier had his leg shattered. When he came round in hospital
the doctors told him they had been obliged to take his leg off.
"Taken my leg off? Blimey! Where is it? Hi, wot yer done wiv it? Fer
'Eaven's sake, find my leg, somebody; it's got seven and a tanner in
the stocking."--_S. W. Baker, 23 Trinity Road, Bedford._