In the Firing Line: Stories of the War by Land and SeaAdcock, Arthur St. John
History
In the Firing Line: Stories of the War by Land and Sea
Adcock, Arthur St. John
World War, 1914-1918
Everywhere you find that the one cry of the soldiers who are invalided
home--they are impatient to be cured quickly and get back “to have
another slap at them.” We know how our women here at home share that
eager enthusiasm in this the most righteous war Britain has ever gone
into; and isn’t there something that stirs you like the sound of a
trumpet in such a passage as this from the letter a Scottish nun living
in Belgium has written to her mother?
“I am glad England is aroused, and that the British lion is out with
all his teeth showing. Here these little lions of Belgians are raging
mad and doing glorious things.
“Tell father I am cheery, and feel sometimes far too warlike for a nun.
That’s my Scottish blood. I hope to goodness the Highlanders, if they
come, will march down another street on their way to the caserne, or I
shall shout and yell and cheer them, and forget I mustn’t look out of
the window.”
An extract from Sergeant T. Cahill’s letter to his friends at Bristol
gives you a snap-shot of our women in the firing line, and of the
fearless jollity and light-heartedness with which our Irish comrades
meet the worst that their enemies can do:
“The Red Cross girleens, with their purty faces and their sweet ways,
are as good men as most of us, and better than some of us. They are not
supposed to venture into the firing line at all, but they get there all
the same, and devil the one of us durst turn them away,” and he goes on
casually, “Mick Clancy is that droll with his larking and bamboozling
the Germans that he makes us nearly split our sides laughing at him
and his ways. Yesterday he got a stick and put a cap on it so that it
peeped above the trenches just like a man, and then the Germans kept
shooting away at it until they must have used up tons of ammunition,
and there was us all the time laughing at them.”
But I think there is perhaps nothing in these letters that is more
touching or more finely significant than this:
“The other day I stopped to assist a young lad of the West Kents, who
had been badly hit by a piece of shell,” writes Corporal Sam Haslett.
“He hadn’t long to live, and knew it, but he wasn’t at all put out
about it. I asked him if there was any message I could take to any one
at home, and the poor lad’s eyes filled with tears as he answered: ‘I
ran away from home and ’listed a year ago. Mother and dad don’t know
I’m here, but you tell them that I’m not sorry I did it.’ When I told
our boys afterwards, they cried like babies, but, mind you, that’s the
spirit that’s going to pull England through this war. I got his name
and the address of his people from his regiment, and I am writing to
tell them that they have every reason to be proud of their lad. He may
have run away from home, but he didn’t run away from the Germans.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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