The British soldier : $b his courage and humourHardy, E. J. (Edward John)
History
The British soldier : $b his courage and humour
Hardy, E. J. (Edward John)
World War, 1914-1918
"Last Sunday I went to see some wounded English soldiers at Versailles.
They are nursed in one of the largest and newest hotels there. You
should see how happy and jolly they are, and how petted by the French
people who go to see them and take them tea, grapes, cigarettes, etc.
Your soldiers are great favourites here. They are so glad when they
meet with somebody who speaks English. I spoke to them about England
and English people, and we sang English songs--'Dolly Gray' and 'Tommy
Atkins.' They made some tea and gave some to all the ladies present."
A French woman who could speak English said laughingly to a Highlander,
"If you kill the Kaiser you may marry my daughter." The soldier replied
that he would do that all right and that she could have a hair of
William's moustache.
Of a French lady, at whose house four British soldiers were billeted,
one of them wrote: "She was wondrous kind, and when we left for the
front Madame and her mother sobbed as if we had been their own sons."
Here is another little tribute: "I am very pleased with the way the
French have treated us. They are good-hearted people. Don't matter who
you see out they all salute you, and the ladies bow to you. What more
could you wish for?"
This man went on to say that he was always addressed as _Monsieur_ (Why
not?) and that he began to think that he was an officer.
And the Belgians also think of the British soldier as a kind-hearted
rescuer.
A little girl, an orphan refugee from Flanders, was taken and cared
for by a family in a London suburb. In spite of the kindness that
encompassed her, she was unhappy and full of terror. She remembered
the strange people with a strange tongue who had swept down upon her
home in Flanders, and the brutality and horror that followed their
incursion. The English people with whom she stayed were kind, but they
were strange, and their tongue was strange, and they terrified her. One
day the son of the house came home. He was in the New Army, and he wore
khaki. At the sight of the khaki the little girl flung herself at the
boy, clung about his legs, and called out "Anglais! Anglais!" She knew
now she was safe.
A wounded Seaforth Highlander heard that a woman with a newborn baby
was in a cottage in a village that was being shelled by the Germans. He
left the Red Cross van, rushed in and saved both mother and child as a
shell crashed through the roof. As he left another shell demolished the
cottage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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