Chapter XVIII: Play and Work

So well did our soldiers keep up their spirits that they were always ready for a little play even when engaged in hard work and fighting. Here is an instance given by a Coldstream Guardsman: "We were down to the last cigarette in a box that had done the company for a week. There was a fight to get it, but the sergeant-major said we would have to shoot for it like the King's Prize at Bisley. It was to go to the man hitting most Germans in fifty shots. A corporal was sent up a tree to signal hits and misses as best he could. Half the company entered, and the prize was won by a chap who had twenty-three hits. The runner-up had twenty-two, and as a sort of consolation prize he was allowed to sit near while the winner smoked the cigarette. He said being near the smoke was better than nothing."

Seven men of the Worcestershire Regiment were able to do a little business one day when they were told they could go for a stroll. They encountered a party of Germans, and captured them all without firing a shot. It was so simple. "We just covered them with our rifles and they surrendered."

Few of us take our easy work in time of peace in the playful spirit which was shown by our soldiers in the trying experiences of the trenches. This is what an officer wrote: "For three weeks we remained near the Aisne, east of Soissons, taking our turn in the trenches in shifts of four days and nights with two days' rest south of the river. We made the most wonderful trenches. The men called them the rabbit warren and themselves rabbits, and when the big guns gave ten seconds' warning they cried out, 'Here comes the gamekeeper,' and darted into their holes."

A soldier invalided home told of this mixture of play with work, or of work with play. "I got my wound in a fight that you will never hear of in official despatches, because it was a little affair of our own. It was what you might call a night attack. We had some leisure in our position along the Aisne, and there was a little village near our lines where we used to go for a bit of a lark. One night, coming back--there were about ten of us--we were surprised to find a light in an empty farmhouse, and were still more surprised to find sounds of revelry coming out through the window. We peeped in, and there were about fifty Germans drinking and eating and smoking, and generally trying to look as if they were having a jolly old time. A dare-devil of an Irishman suggested that we ought to give the Germans a little surprise, and we were all in with him. Doing our best to look fierce and create the impression that we had at least a brigade behind us, we flung open the door without any ceremony. Our first rush was for the passage, where most of the Germans had stacked their rifles, and from there we were able to cover the largest party in any one room. They were so taken aback that they made very little resistance. The only chap who showed any fight was a big fellow, who had good reason to fear us, for he had escaped the day before after being arrested as a spy. He whipped out a revolver, and some of his chums drew swords, but we fired into them, and they threw up their hands, after one had sent a revolver bullet through my arm. We fastened them up securely, collected all the smokes and grub they had not touched, and marched them off to the camp."

A soldier wrote: "One day last week we were on the move, and were about as hungry as men could be, when we came on a party of Uhlans just about to sit down to a dinner, which had been prepared for them at a big house. They looked as if they had had too much of a good time lately, and wanted thinning down, so we took them prisoners, and let them watch us enjoying their dinner. They didn't like it at all, and one of them muttered something about an English pig. The baby of the troop asked him outside to settle it with the fists, but he wasn't having it. After the best dinner I've had in my life we went round to where the Uhlans had commandeered the supplies, and offered to pay, but the people were so pleased that we had got the food instead of the Germans that they wouldn't hear of payment."

On another occasion Uhlans were driven out of their "supper room" by a small body of our cavalry. They left a finely-cooked repast of beefsteaks, onions and fried potatoes all ready and done to a turn, with about fifty bottles of Pilsener lager beer, which was an acceptable relish.

It was as good as a play when some of our soldiers were looking at and wishing for walnuts, and a German shell came and knocked them off the tree for them.

On another occasion when a German shell had set some wood on fire they cooked their food on the opportune flame.

A bombardier, R.F.A., wrote: "We were unable to sleep for the pouring rain, and sat at a big camp fire with hot tea and rum. The boys asked me to sing 'Annie Laurie,' and I was never in better voice. When I finished there were officers, and even the staff officers, who had come over the field in the rain to join in. They were nearly all Scotch, and 'Annie Laurie,' after all, is to a Scot what the 'Marseillaise' is to a Frenchman. One fellow was singing 'Boiled Beef and Carrots,' when a bullet came and knocked his cap off. An officer nearly died of laughing."

"The labour that delights us physics pain," as the corporal of the Garrison Artillery found, who wrote of his work: "There is something terribly fascinating about this sort of thing, and every day brings some new excitement and experience. I feel more the hardened old veteran each day, and don't care a straw where they send us. I may not tell you where we are, but I am proud to say we have seen as much sport as most of them. We are being looked after splendidly. Our officers are all kindness and consideration. The major is a typical warrior, and a thorough sport (as you well know). We don't care where he leads us, we are so fond of him."

When at one place the German searchlights were turned on the British lines and an artillery fusillade began, a man of the Middlesex Regiment shouted to his comrade, "I say, Bill, it's just like a play an' us in the limelight." The enemy had not got the range accurately, and so little was the effect of the fire that some of our men laughed loudly and held up their caps on the end of their rifles to give the German gunners "a bit of encouragement."

Rifleman Horace Copley, 1st Battalion King's Royal Rifles, wrote: "Such a good joke! The Germans have just fired over forty shells at what they think is a line of trenches. There is a biscuit tin flashing in the sun, and they think it is a heliograph. Some joker has fixed the tin, and they fired at it all day yesterday, exploding thousands of pounds' worth of big shells. But the tin is still flashing. Ha, ha!"

If on this occasion the failure of the Germans caused amusement, on another occasion the success of our gunners (so hideous is war) did the same. "The officer in charge," said a looker-on, "gave the order to fire to the gunners, and no sooner was the order given than it was carried out. What made me laugh was every now and then the officer would say, 'There are some Germans over there,' and the reply from the gunner was, 'All right, sir, I'll soon have them down,'; then he started firing the gun, and had them down in a few seconds."

Even out of the fighting at Mons, Bandsman Wall, and others of the Connaught Rangers, got all the fun of a fair. "We had nothing to do but shoot the Germans as they came up, just like knocking dolls down at the fair ground. Some of our men are beginning to fancy themselves as marksmen. If they don't hit every time they think they ought to see a doctor about it."

So playfully did our soldiers take their work that a man had a football tied to him as he marched to battle.

Another could not help writing almost all his letter home in football terms: "The great match for the European Cup is still being played out, and I daresay there's a record gate, though you can't see the spectators from the field. That's one of the rules of the game when this match is on. In spite of all their swank the Germans haven't scored a goal yet, and they're simply kicking at the ball any way in their blind rage at not being able to score. Our team is about as fit as you could have them, and they're all good men, though some of them are amateurs and the Germans are all 'pros.' The German forwards are a rotten pack. They have no dash worth talking about, and they come up the field as though they were going to the funeral of their nearest and dearest. When they are charged they nearly always fall away on to their backs, and their goalkeeping's about the rottenest thing you ever set eyes on. I wouldn't give a brass farthing for their chances of lifting the Cup, and if you have any brass to spare you can put it on the Franco-British team, who are scoring goals so fast that we haven't time to stop and count them. The Kaiser makes a rotten captain for any team, and it's little wonder they are losing. Most of our side would like to tell him what they think of him and his team."

Mr. Harold Ashton, of _The Daily News and Leader_, showed to a Horse Artillery gunner a copy of that paper. "Where's the sporting news?" asked the artilleryman as he glanced over the pages. "Shot away in the war," replied Mr. Ashton. "What!" exclaimed Tommy, "not a line about the Arsenal? Well, I'm blowed! This _is_ a war!"

One day men of the Lincoln Regiment had a game of football, and French soldiers looked on. During the game a German aeroplane came over and dropped a few bombs, but no one was injured. The game was stopped and there was a rush for the rifles. They fired, but did not succeed in winging the aeroplane, and a French machine gun was brought into action. It finished the aeroplane and the game was continued. The Frenchmen cheered and said, "You English are very misunderstandable. Fancy playing football when German bombs are dropping from the skies!"

The difficulty is, however, as one football devotee explained, that "you can never count on getting your team together. Only the other day I was talking to four of our best men when bang came a big shell, and when I picked myself up I couldn't see a trace of them--blown to atoms like that."

Football is difficult in such circumstances, but think of the spirit which enables the men to play it at all!

The following amused those in the trenches who heard it. Some of our gunners having lost their way at night wandered about until they were ready to drop with fatigue. Then in the darkness they ran into a detachment of cavalry posted near a wood. They could not make out the colour of their uniform and feared that they were Germans. Their relief was great when one of the cavalry shouted out, "Where the hell do you think you are going to?" "I do not approve of swear words," said the gunner who related the adventure, "but I was more than glad to hear one then. It made us know that we were with friends."

"Yarns" like this are spun by those who have to watch or who have nothing to do but wait and see. There is always a funny man to raise a laugh, and not infrequently rival jesters enter into competition. There are rhymesters, too, and they try to put into crude verse and apply to a well-known air something that has happened on the previous day. If a private has lost the photograph of the girl he left behind him, he cannot get consolation from his best friend, for the whole company would hear of it and sing about it.

Sometimes their work led the troops to a little bit of sport. "We billeted for two days at a place two days' march from Belgium and had a pretty good time bathing and--what was most amusing--fishing in a small pond for 'tiddlers.' I and a chum went to a woman at a house and, making her understand the best way we could, begged some cotton and a couple of pins. We had a couple of hours fishing and captured quite two dozen, although before long lots of our chaps caught the complaint and did the same as we did, causing much amusement. I suppose that French woman had to buy a new stock of cotton, but she was a good sort and was as much amused as the soldiers."