World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Canadian
10's luck still held good. By the way perhaps
you would like to know why we call England "Blighty"--it seems that it
comes from two Hindoo words meaning "My home," and as there were a lot
of Indian soldiers out in France at the beginning of the war and they
were with the regular English troops, I suppose it was passed along
that way--to get a "Blighty" means to get a wound that takes you to
"Blighty." To say that a man has got a "Belgique" means that he is
dead. The boys have different sayings for everything, and they sound
funny unless you know what they mean. "Buckshee" the English troops
call anything that you might have to spare, such as "Have you a
buckshee razor?" meaning "Have you a spare razor?" The word "buckshee"
comes from the Hindoo word "Backsheesh." Well, to continue, the other
boy to come to No. 10 was a freak; how the devil he ever got in the
Army beats me. He was deaf, and when you spoke to him you had to
holler; also, he had a cleft palate so you could hardly understand him
when he spoke, but he was a good man in the line and when he was on
sentry, he was up on the fire-step looking over all the time; only at
night of course. He used to pack along a box of ammunition every night
and do his best to fire the lot before morning. When the scouts were
out as they used to be every night, patrolling "No Man's Land," the
word was passed along in the trench and we would either stop firing or
fire high; desultory fire was always kept up all night. Well, we could
never make McKone understand that the scouts were out; and he would
keep on blazing away--at last the scouts made a kick and we stopped him
firing when they were out--but he was awfully sore. "What am I here
for?--I'm not a dummy," said he. One night he had been blazing away
and had made Fritz sore, and Fritz had turned about three machine guns
on the spot where Mac was. The bullets were coming around him like
bees around a hive, but he couldn't hear them. At last he heard
something; Corporal Banks was coming along the trench at the time, and
Mac stopped him. "Say, Corporal, there's an aeroplane up there
somewhere," and he gazed up into the sky. "Come down, you fool, that's
machine gun fire," says Banks. We used to have lots of fun "chipping"
him, but all he'd reply was "Aw, you go to h----." One night Bink and
Bob were out on "a covering" party--their job was to take their rifle
and bomb and lie out in front of our men as they were putting out wire
in "No Man's Land,"--the idea is to prevent the party from being
surprised by the Germans. It was a wet cold night, and so the officer
gave them a drink of rum before they went; in fact, they asked him for
it. Well, they crawled out and lay down, and I guess the rum gave them
some "Dutch" courage, for after the boys had finished their wiring and
gone back to the trench, Bink and Bob thought it would be a good scheme
to crawl to the German lines and throw their bombs in. So forward they
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