World War, 1914-1918 -- Anecdotes; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
We expected to see the Cockney passenger roll off dead. All he did,
however, was to put his hand to his mouth and shout to those inside the
tank: "Hi, conductor! Any room inside?--it's rainin'!"--_A. H. Boughton
(ex "B" Battery, H.A.C.), 53 Dafforne Road, S.W.17._
"Barbed Wire's Dangerous!"
A wiring party in the Loos salient--twelve men just out from home.
Jerry's Verey lights were numerous, machine-guns were unpleasantly
busy, and there were all the dangers and alarms incidental to a sticky
part of the line. The wiring party, carrying stakes and wire, made its
way warily, and every man breathed apprehensively. Suddenly one London
lad tripped over a piece of old barbed wire and almost fell his length.
"Lumme," he exclaimed, "that ain't 'arf dangerous!"--_T. C. Farmer,
M.C., of Euston Square, London (late of "The Buffs")._
Tale of an Egg
I was attached as a signaller to a platoon on duty in an advanced post
on the Ypres-Menin Road. We had two pigeons as an emergency means of
communication should our wire connection fail.
One afternoon Fritz put on a strafe which blew in the end of the
culvert in which we were stationed. We rescued the pigeon basket from
the debris and discovered that an egg had appeared.
That evening, when the time came to send in the usual evening
"situation report," I was given the following message to transmit:
"Pigeon laid one egg; otherwise situation normal."--_D. Webster, 85
Highfield Avenue, N.W.11._
"No Earfkwikes"
On a bitterly cold, wet afternoon in February 1918 four privates and
a corporal were trying to take what shelter they could. One little
Cockney who had served in the Far East with the 10th Middlesex was
complaining about everything in general, but especially about the
idiocy of waging war in winter.
"Wot yer grumblin' at?" broke in the corporal, "you with yer fawncy
tyles of Inja? At any rate, there ain't no blinking moskeeters 'ere nor
'orrible malyria."
There was a break in the pleasantries as a big one came over. In the
subsequent explosion the little Cockney was fatally wounded.
"Corpril," the lad gasped, as he lay under that wintry sky, "you fergot
to menshun there ain't no bloomin' sun-stroke, _nor no earfkwikes,
neither_."
And he smiled--a delightful, whimsical smile--though the corporal's
"Sorry, son" was too late.--_V. Meik, 107 King Henry's Road, N.W.3._
A "Bow Bells" Heroine
For seven hours, with little intermission, the German airmen bombed a
camp not a hundred miles from Etaples. Of the handful of Q.M.A.A.C.s
stationed there, one was an eighteen-year-old middle-class girl,
high-strung, sensitive, not long finished with her convent school.
Another was Kitty, a Cockney girl of twenty, by occupation a
machine-hand, by vocation (missed) a comédienne, and, by heaven, a
heroine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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