Chapter XXV: Unconscious Humorists

It cannot be claimed, perhaps, for any one class of society that they are more humorous than are others, but as soldiers live, day and night, in a crowd, they sharpen each other's wits, and their training has, or ought to have, the effect of making them good observers.

As the British soldier is brave without knowing it, so is he an unconscious humorist. He does not set up to be that sad thing--a "funny man."

Our soldiers began the campaign against Germany facetiously by printing in chalk on the troop trains at Boulogne "No-stop run to Berlin."

When our soldiers come home, you will hear some wonderful French. A man from Limerick asked a war correspondent to translate an English sentence into French. "I did it to the best of my ability". He looked at me very solemnly; then said: 'Do it agin, sorr.' I did it again, and he stopped me. 'Whisht, hold yer jaw, or be me soul the guarrd'll arrest ye for a German spy; yer Frinch is homemade an' brought up on th' bottle.'

A bombardier of the Royal Field Artillery wrote:

"One of our fellows thought he would try for some eggs at a farmhouse. Naturally they couldn't understand him, so he opened his mouth, rubbed his stomach, flapped his arms and cried, 'Cock-adoodle-doo!' The eggs came promptly. Another chap tried to get some bread at a farm. After he had made all sorts of queer signs the woman seemed to understand and said, 'Oui, oui, M'sieur,' rushed back into the house and brought back a bundle of hay! There was a terrific roar of laughter from the troops. The non-plussed look on the woman's face and 'fed up' expression on the chap's made a picture."

Private Macnamara, of the Royal Fusiliers, relates that during the fighting on the Aisne a German called out to a company of Fusiliers: "Wait till we catch you in our barber's shop in London." The Fusiliers wiped out the German company with the bayonet, a private shouting: "You won't get to London again."

Another soldier wrote, probably joking: "Our trenches and the enemy's were only a couple of hundred yards apart, but we could not get the beggars to give us a chance to pot them. So at last I called out, 'Waiter!' and up went five heads at once."

At one time, when the German shells were particularly numerous, a private of the 1st Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry called out, "Fall in here for your pay, A company." There was a good laugh.

Another shell also caused a good laugh. In the rush to avoid it, two of our men fell over each other, and one actually sat upon the shell. It exploded. When the smoke cleared away the man was discovered to have escaped with very slight injuries to himself; but his trousers were torn to shreds, to the great amusement of his comrades.

A private of the Royal Irish Regiment wrote this to his mother: "There's plenty of hard fighting coming our way these days, and though we suffer cruelly once in a while, we always give them something to let them know that we have not lost our fighting powers in 'Paddy's land,' whatever else we may have lost. You could not help laughing at some of the tales the German prisoners have about us. When they knew they had been captured by an Irish regiment they wanted to know how it was we were not at home in the civil war that was going on. Says I to one of them that came off with that blarney in his queer English, 'This is the only war we know, or want to know, about for the time being, and there's mightily little that's civil about it or the way you are behaving yourselves.'"

It was the birthday of Pat Ryan, of the Connaught Rangers, and he thought that he ought to do something to celebrate it. Without telling anyone, he went out of the trenches in the afternoon, and came back after dusk with two big Germans in tow. How or where he got them nobody knows. The captain of his company asked him how he managed to catch the two. "Sure, and I surrounded them, Sorr," was the reply.

Even in the midst of a bayonet charge an Irish soldier caused laughter by calling out, "Look at thim German divils retratin' with their backs facin' us."

Private William Price, R.A.M.C., wrote: "Last Sunday week about 6 p.m. a shell (coal boxes we call them), eight inches wide and four feet long, passed through the roof and side wall of a barn in which the bearers sleep, and fell into the grounds of the hospital, where we were having a little service; but, thank God, it didn't explode. Strange to relate, the subject of the sermon was 'Miracles,' and this was one of the greatest, for had it come a little later there would have been several of us having food and rest in the barn. The shell smashed heavy beams, hurling them just where I should have been resting. We buried the shell, and enclosed it with a fence. This is the verse we made up and placed on it":

Sunday, September 27th, 1914.

"Here lies a shell of German invention, To do us great harm was their intention; And in striking a barn it caused great alarm, While the troops were singing the ----th Psalm. But don't be afraid, the danger is o'er; Still if it goes off we'll say 'au revoir.' So now we'll conclude with love and affection, Sincerely trusting there'll be no resurrection."

An Irish soldier told his mother in a letter that they had German shells for breakfast--not egg shells. She was not to believe, however, about the hardships they had to endure, even from her son. "I never believe anything I hear and only half of what I say."

Outside a temporary post office was the notice, "We close from noon to 2 p.m." Underneath a joker wrote, "Prussian cannon are requested to do the same."

The Germans, in crushing numbers, were about to enter a town. It was necessary to hold them back long enough to enable the British troops to retire in good order. A handful of Scots were selected for this duty. Sheltered in one of the first houses of the village, they kept up a well-sustained fire on the enemy, but had to endure themselves a perfect storm of bullets. The shattered windows flew in all directions. The walls were riddled with bullet holes. Already several of our men had dropped. Suddenly the German fire ceased; the enemy were evidently shifting ground to a better position, and one of those silent moments of waiting ensued--the worst of all to endure. While the pause lasted, a Scottish sergeant noticed that our frail fortress was a grocer's shop. On a shelf he found a few packets of chocolate. An idea occurred to him. Turning to his men, he held up the packets, saying: "Whoever bowls his man over gets a piece." The German fusilade began anew. The Scots, roaring with laughter at the sergeant's marksmanship prizes, fired back as coolly as if at target practice. The sergeant, while keeping his own rifle busy, watched the effect of the fire on the advancing enemy. He recorded each successful shot with "Got him," and handed over a cake of chocolate to the winning marksman. Alas! there were few prize winners who lived to taste their reward.

Here is an instance of dour Scotch humour. Two Highlanders, one bigger than the other, were both hit, and there was only one stretcher available. The little one refused to enter it and the big one got angry at the refusal, so raising himself with his unwounded arm he cried, "You go the noo, Jock, an if you're not slippy about it, you'll gaur me gae ye something ye'll remember when am a' richt again." Jock didn't wait any longer after that.

A British cavalry subaltern who was cut off from his men hid in the edge of a wood by a road. It was not long before he saw an unsuspecting armed German soldier patrolling the road. He could have shot the man without warning, but felt that it would be akin to murder to kill him in cold blood. In order to instil a little of the spirit of combat into the affair, therefore, he crept out of cover, ran up behind the "boch," as our Allies would call him, and gave him a ferocious kick. Instead of showing fight the startled and pained German gave a yell and ran for dear life, leaving the subaltern laughing too hard to shoot.

This sort of chivalry, however, had for once to pay a penalty. A patrol of the Gloucestershire Regiment met two German soldiers looting an orchard. They did not like to shoot them with their backs turned, so they shouted to give them a chance of defending themselves. One of the Germans turned about and sent a bullet crashing into the brain of the man who had been the first to suggest that they should be warned.

A Highlander writes home from the war to a friend that things are going so badly with "our dear old chum Wilhelm" that "I've bet X---- a new hat that I'll be home by Christmas."

Bets are common in the trenches. Gunners wager about the number of their hits, riflemen on the number of misses by the enemy. A soldier told a correspondent that they gambled in the trenches on the next man to be killed. "We'd get up a little sweepstake, draw names and--wait! There was always a favourite. I held that not altogether enviable position three times. But I disappointed my backers! One day I noticed that a fellow a few yards away kept on turning round to look at me. He did it so often that at last I realised with a bit of a shock that he had drawn me in the sweepstake. He was waiting to see me tumble down with a bullet through me. It would have been worth 15s. to him."

Here is an extract from a letter: "I received your request for a German helmet off a head I had knocked over. Will try to get you a German's ear or some other portable article. I am very fit and well, and trying to force British culture on the Germans. I think now we have put a spoke in the Kaiser's wheel for good, and I am proud to think that I have been a small splinter in the spoke."

It is unlawful to trade with the enemy, but our soldiers consider that it is legitimate to play practical jokes on the Germans when their trenches are near ours, as is sometimes the case. A beetroot field was near, so our men carved caricatures of the Kaiser on beetroot and inside put reports of the Allies' successes in East and West. The "busts" were then adroitly hurled into the German trenches. This sort of pleasantry frequently led to furious abuse and the liberal exchange of bullets, generally harmless.

At one place the German trenches were advanced to within sixty yards of the British first line of trenches. The Germans had fixed up barbed wire entanglements, to which they attached here and there a number of empty jam tins, arranged in couples in such a way that on the slightest disturbance they were bound to jangle. Crawling very cautiously out in the dead of night, one of our men fastened the end of a ball of string to the nearest point of the barbed wire, and let the string run out as he crawled no less cautiously back again. The first tug at the string when he had regained the shelter of the British trench started a faint jangling, which startled the German sentries. The next produced a fusilade; and the Germans blazed away at the clattering jam tins, while the British roared with laughter.

For nearly a week a battery of the R.F.A. on a ridge had been shelling the enemy's position, and the Germans could not find them; but at last they did, and made it so hot for a time that the gunners had temporarily to leave their charges. When darkness fell, however, they removed the guns to a fresh position on the left, but, in order to mislead the enemy, they rigged up some ploughs and bundles of straw to resemble guns, and left them in the old position. The ruse was entirely successful, and our men were laughing up their sleeve all the next day, for the Germans kept up an incessant fire upon the dummy guns.

In one trench, where a German sharpshooter regularly opened the day with a shot through a certain loophole, the trench amused itself by insuring being waked up for the fighting. They hung a strip of metal at the back of the loophole. The clang of bullet on metal woke them up--an alarm clock "made in Germany."

Here is a tale of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The Germans opposite them get their rations--cognac, bread, and meat--every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday night. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders found this out, and regularly on these nights they did a bayonet attack, and brought back quite a lot of grub.