True Stories of the Great War, Volume 6 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
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True Stories of the Great War, Volume 6 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
And so beflagged she rolled her triumphant way up over the
captured redoubt and down the other side, with the boot-tip bobbing
and swaying and jerking at the end of her pink tail. The sequel to
her story may be told here, although it only came back to the men who
decorated her after filtering round the firing line, up and down the
communication lines, round half the hospitals and most of the messes
at or behind the Front.
And many as came to be the Tales of the Tanks, this of the Pink-Tailed
'un, as Pug called her, belonged unmistakably to her and, being so, was
joyfully recognized and acclaimed by her decorators. She came in due
time across the redoubt, says the story, and bore down on the British
line at the other extreme of the horseshoe to where a certain infantry
C.O., famed in past days for a somewhat speedy and hectic career,
glared in amazement at the apparition lurching and bobbing and bowing
and crawling toad-like towards him.
"I knew," he is reported to have afterwards admitted, "I knew it
couldn't be that I'd got 'em again. But in the old days I always had
one infallible sign. Crimson rats and purple snakes I might get over;
but if they had pink tails, I knew I was in for it certain. And I
tell you it gave me quite a turn to see this blighter waddling up and
wagging the old pink tail."
But this end of the story only came to the Stonewalls long enough
after--just as it is said to have come in time to the ears of the Here
We Are's skipper, and, mightily pleasing him and his crew, set him
chuckling delightedly and swearing he meant to apply and in due and
formal course obtain permission to change his land-ship's name, and
having regretfully parted with the pink tail, immortalize it in the
name of H.M.L.S. _The D.T.'s_.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters from
original sources.
A NOVELIST AND SOLDIER ON THE BATTLE LINE
_Letters by Coningsby Dawson_
_British-American Author of Many Notable Books_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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