Chapter XVII: Not Downhearted

Frequently in the midst of a heavy German fire some British joker would shout, "Are we downhearted?" and this would be loudly answered in the negative by all British soldiers near him. Certainly that soldier was not downhearted who pasted "Business as Usual" on a biscuit tin, and stuck it on top of his trench for the enlightenment of the enemy.

The Hampshire Regiment, when advancing against the Germans, sang "Pop goes the Weasel" as each shell burst.

Another regiment went into battle shouting, "Early doors this way. Early doors ninepence." They were all as cheerful as if they were going to a football match. One soldier said that he got his wound because he became too excited to take cover when arguing about the relative qualities of two famous boxers.

Two soldiers in the trenches when shells were bursting round them played marbles with bullets from a shrapnel shell.

On one occasion our men, though being fired at by artillery, were kicking about a football. A German aviator who observed this sent in a report that the British forces were thoroughly disorganised and running about their post in blind alarm.

Many men remarked casually in their letters that the letters were written with bullets and shrapnel flying round. One soldier told his mother that his letter was deferred "because the Germans were trying to worry us," but added, "Do not believe half the stories about our hardships. I haven't seen or heard of a man who made complaint of anything. You can't expect a six-course dinner on active service, but we get plenty to fight on."

A _Times_ correspondent told how he asked a wounded British soldier who was sitting on the roadside if his wound hurt him. He replied, "It's not that, but I'm blest if I haven't lost my pipe in that last charge."

The same correspondent saw a number of British soldiers come to Paris after a "terrible tussle" with the enemy, and said that they looked as if they had arrived from a day's holiday on Hampstead Heath, for though dusty, they were trim and smiling, and seemed to be fit for anything.

The excitable Parisians admired the way Mr. Thomas Atkins took everything as a matter of course and accommodated himself to circumstances. They shrieked with admiration when they saw two Highlanders with arms wounded dance a reel on a railway platform.

In another part of France a train full of British soldiers arrived. A Frenchman said to some of them, "Bravo! You have done splendid work, I hope that you will soon get home." "Home, sir?" replied a gunner, "why we're just getting warmed up for work. It took us a few weeks to get used to it, but now we love it and are as fit as fiddles."

"What is it like at the front?" a private of the Royal Irish Fusiliers was asked in a hospital in England. "Well, now it's hard to tell you that unless you've been there, but, faith, I'll make a good try, just to oblige you. It's very little different from what goes on at home. The day's made up of grousing and fighting, except that instead of fighting among ourselves it's the Germans we fight. Maybe the grousing's a bit different, too, from what it is in peace time. The Englishmen swear most when the meals aren't all they might be, but the Scotch and the Irish are mostly angered because the German devils won't come out and fight so's we can give them the cold iron. The English don't seem to mind that so much, so long as they have full stomachs and can keep firing away at the Germans with the big guns and the rifles."

Corporal Graham Hodson, Royal Engineers, wrote to his parents: "I am feeling awfully well, and am enjoying myself no end. Oh, it's a great life!" So little downhearted were his men that an officer, after observing them, said admiringly, "You are a lively lot of beggars. You don't seem to realise that we are at war."

One man, however, thought it well to give the inexperienced a little warning. He was a wounded soldier who was travelling in a train. At a point on the line where it ran parallel with the road he saw a brand new Territorial battalion marching up to the front, He stuck his bandaged head out of the door and yelled, "Are you dahn'earted?" The Terriers, from the colonel to the smallest drummer, shouted, "No-o-oh!" The wounded man replied, "Well, you ---- soon will be when you get in those trenches."

When they were being heavily shelled a regiment shouted to their comrades in some distant trenches, "Are we downhearted?" A pause ensued, then a bloody spectre raised himself from a trench, shouted "No!" with a last breath and fell back dead.

It is a curious fact in the Army that the harder the conditions the more cheerful the men are. When everything is all right there is grumbling, but as soon as things are bad they all get as happy as sand-boys.

The "wild pulsation of strife" seems to be a "rapture" to some, and that soldier no doubt meant what he said when he wrote to his parents, "You can't believe how happy I was fighting the Germans. I felt as if I were in a football match."

A wounded soldier said that there was a fascination in battle that made him wish to be in one again. "You forget all fear, everybody is full of excitement. You hardly think of your funeral."

An officer wrote, after describing the terrible marches our troops had to make in their strategic retirement to the neighbourhood of Paris: "Our long ordeal came to a sudden end. For reasons we could not understand the Germans were retreating on our left and forsaking the tempting bait of Paris. On September 5th we got the order to advance, and instantly new life flowed into our veins. It is amazing how speedily we forget our fatigue and the mental and physical horrors we had gone through. Though their feet were sore and many of them bleeding, the men stepped back to the Marne singing, 'It's a long, long way to Tipperary,' or the new version, 'It's a wrong, wrong way to tickle Mary.'"

Sir Douglas Haig, the General who led so well in the retreat, had good reason for saying, "We have had hardish times, but nothing in our history has surpassed the fine soldierly qualities displayed by the troops."