500 OF THE BEST COCKNEY WAR STORIES REPRINTED FROM THE LONDON Evening News AND ILLUSTRATED BY BERT THOMAS WITH AN OPENING YARN BY GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.S.O., etc. Vice-President of the British Legion President of the Metropolitan Area of the British Legion ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS LTD. LONDON, E.C.4 EDITOR'S FOREWORD In the remembering, and in the retelling, of those war days when laughter sometimes saved men's reason, Cockneys the world over have left to posterity a record of noble and imperishable achievement. From the countless tales collected by the London _Evening News_ these five hundred, many of them illustrated by the great war-time artist, Bert Thomas, have been chosen as a fitting climax and perpetuation. Sir Ian Hamilton's story of another war shows that, however much methods of fighting may vary from generation to generation, there is no break in continuity of a great tradition, that the spirits of laughter and high adventure are immortal in the make-up of the British soldier. Sir Ian's story is doubly fitting. As President of the Metropolitan Area of the British Legion he is intimately concerned with the after-war welfare of just that Tommy Atkins who is immortalised in these pages. In the second place, all profits from the sale of this book will be devoted to the cause which the Higher Command in every branch of the Services is fostering--the British Legion. [Illustration] CONTENTS SIR IAN HAMILTON'S STORY 1. ACTION 2. LULL 3. HOSPITAL 4. HIGH SEAS 5. HERE AND THERE #/ SIR IAN HAMILTON'S STORY The Great War was a matrix wherein many anecdotes have sprouted. They are short-lived plants--fragile as mushrooms--none too easy to extricate either, embedded as they are in the mass. To dig out the character of a General even from the plans of his General Staff is difficult; how much more difficult to dig out the adventures of Number 1000 Private Thomas Atkins from those of the other 999 who went "like one man" with him over the top? In the side-shows there was more scope for the individual and in the Victorian wars much more scope. To show the sort of thing I mean I am going to put down here for the first time an old story, almost forgotten now, in the hopes that it may interest by its contrast to barrages and barbed wire. Although only an old-fashioned affair of half a dozen bullets and three or four dead men it was a great event to me as it led to my first meeting with the great little Bobs of Kandahar. On the morning of September 11, 1879, I lay shivering with fever and ague at Alikhel in Afghanistan. So sick did I seem that it was decided I should be carried a day's march back to G.H.Q. on the Peiwar Kotal to see if the air of that high mountain pass would help me to pull myself round. Polly Forbes, a boy subaltern not very long from Eton, was sent off to play the part of nurse.