"Over the Top," by an American Soldier Who Went: Together with Tommy's Dictionary of the TrenchesEmpey, Arthur Guy
History
"Over the Top," by an American Soldier Who Went: Together with Tommy's Dictionary of the Trenches
Empey, Arthur Guy
English language -- Slang -- Dictionaries; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
As our section passed her I yelled out: "Hello, Flossie, Blighty--What
Hopes?" Her reply made our love die out instantly.
"Ah, go to hell!"
This brought quite a laugh from the marching column directed at me,
and I instantly made up my mind that our sketch should immediately run
in opposition to 'Blighty--What Hopes?'
When we returned to our billet from the march, Curley Wallace, my
theatrical partner, came running over to me and said he had found a
swanky place in which to produce our show.
After taking off my equipment, and followed by the rest of the
section, I went over to the building he had picked out. It was a
monstrous barn with a platform at one end which would make an ideal
stage. The section got right on the job, and before night had that
place rigged out in apple-pie order.
The next day was Sunday and after church parade we put all our time on
a dress rehearsal, and it went fine.
I made four or five large signs announcing that our company would open
up that evening at the King George the Fifth Theatre, on the corner of
Ammo Street and Sandbag Terrace. General admission was one half franc.
First ten rows in orchestra one franc, and boxes two francs. By this
time our printed programs had returned from London, and I further
announced that on the night of the first performance a program would
be given free of charge to men holding tickets costing a franc or
over.
We had an orchestra of seven men and seven different instruments. This
orchestra was excellent, while they were not playing.
The performance was scheduled to start at 6 P.M.
At 5.15 there was a mob in front of our one entrance and it looked
like a big night. We had two boxes each accommodating four people, and
these we immediately sold out. Then a brilliant idea came to Ikey
Cohenstein. Why not use the rafters overhead, call them boxes, and
charge two francs for a seat on them? The only difficulty was how were
the men to reach these boxes, but to Ikey this was a mere detail.
He got long ropes and tied one end around each rafter and then tied a
lot of knots in the ropes. These ropes would take the place of
stairways.
We figured out that the rafters would seat about forty men and sold
that number of tickets accordingly,
When the ticket-holders for the boxes got a glimpse of the rafters and
were informed that they had to use the rope stairway, there was a howl
of indignation, but we had their money and told them that if they did
not like it they could write to the management later and their money
would be refunded; but under these conditions they would not be
allowed to witness the performance that night.
After a little grousing they accepted the situation with the promise
that if the show was rotten they certainly would let us know about it
during the performance,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account