Military Songs of War

A Happy Ending

Administrator — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:40:15 +0000

I have a French book for travellers in France, so with it I went to a farm and showed them that I wanted eggs. So they said, “Ah, wee.” The man got a whip and bunched all the chickens together, and then told me to pick one out. I tried to make him understand it was eggs I wanted, not chickens, but failed. So I got an onion, put it on some straw, sat on it, and then got up and “Cock-a-hoodle-dooed!” Laugh, you would have thought they had gone mad. They went to the farm next door and told them, and there I was struck in the middle of them, going all colours of the rainbow. The secret of it was this; in the book it says: “English, I would like two boiled eggs; French Je veux deux œufs à la coque.” I showed them the last word, which I thought was eggs, but eggs is œufs. Well, well, it’s all in a lifetime: A London Fusilier

The Indian Men

Administrator — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:57:02 +0000

Everybody is wild about the Indians, and the way they behave themselves under fire is marvellous. One day we were close to them when their infantry received its baptism of fire. When they got the order to advance you never saw men more pleased in all your life. They went forward with a rush like a football team charging their opponents, or a party of revellers rushing to catch the last train. They got to grips with the Germans in double-quick time, and the howl of joy that went up told us that those chaps felt that they were paying the Germans back in full for the peppering they had got whilst waiting for orders. When they came back from that charge they looked very well pleased with themselves, and they had every right to be. They are very proud of being selected to fight with us, and are terribly anxious to make a good impression. They have done it, and no mistake. I watched them one day under shell fire and I was astonished at their coolness. “Coal-boxes” were being emptied around them, but they didn’t seem to pay the slightest heed, and if one of them did go under his mates simply went on as though nothing had happened. They make light of wounds, and I have known cases where men have fought for days with wounds that might have excused any man dropping out: I have seen a man dress one himself in the firing line. One day I questioned one chap about it, and his answer, given with a smile, was “We must be brave as the English.” They are astonished at the coolness of our men under fire, and it’s amusing to hear them trying to pick up our camp songs. They were greatly taken with “The March of the Cameron Men,” which they heard one night. They have a poor opiniom of the Germans as fighting men, and are greatly interested when we tell them of the horrors perpetrated on the French and Belgians. We are all impressed with the Indians—they are fine fellows: A Sergeant of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers

Music and Lunch

Administrator — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:03:03 +0000

We have been in the thick of the fighting all the time, and I can’t understand how it happens that I’m alive and here now, and everyone else is the same. If ever there was a Providence above watching and guarding, there is one over our regiment, and me in particular. Last week I was four days and three nights without sleep at all, except an hour in the saddle or lying on the roadside; but we have been having a rest this last two days, and we could do with it. You don’t look very well in your photo; in fact, it made me feel more worried than whole regiments of Germans would do. You are worrying about me, I am afraid, and you absolutely must not do that. Why, I’m in the pink of condition; have just had a chicken for dinner (from a deserted ch teau). Have just had two packets of Player’s from the Cigarette Fund. I’m just going to have a sleep, and I wouldn’t call the King my uncle: A Bandsman of the Lancers

The Franco-British Team

Administrator — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:03:02 +0000

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. Our team is about as fit as you can 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 their backs, and their goal-keeping’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: A Gunner of the Royal Field Artillery

Rubbing It In

Administrator — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:03:05 +0000

What most of us feel here is that Germans are staking everything on fighting in France or Belgium, and when they are beaten, as they will be sooner or later, they will howl for peace to save their own country from the horrors of invasion. That’s an idea we have got from their prisoners, and they think it’s a rattling good one. It it were left to the army to settle you may be sure that we’d vote to a man for giving the devil’s a taste of their own medicine, and you’ll see us crossing their sacred Rhine before long unless you’re the greatest fools in creation. You are only a woman and can’t vote, but for Heaven’s sake rub it in to all the men you know that this is what the army feels about the thing. We wouldn’t make peace with the devils until we’ve rubbed their noses well into the ground of their Fatherland, and we’ll do it yet, even if it costs us a million lives: Lance-Corpl. S. Northcroft, of Wolverhampton

Putting up with It

Administrator — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:03:11 +0000

Fighting’s kindergarten work compared with lying in your damp clothes in the washed-out-trenches night and day, with maybe not a chance of getting any more warmth than you can get from a wax match. That you may have in the day-time, but you’ll get into trouble if you fit it on in the night, when the least sign of light will bring the enemy’s fire down on you, besides the court-martial next day. You’re lying there until you’er as stiff as if you were dead, and your body’s twisted and torn with the pains of rheumatism and lumbago or quinsy, or your whole frame shakes with the ague. That’s the sort of work that tells you whether a man’s made of the right stuff, but you needn’t think there’s any grumbling. Our chaps can put up with that just as well as anybody, and they’ll come through it all right: Pte. Cook, Coldstream Guards

The London Bus

Administrator — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:02:47 +0000

Some plucky things have been done by chauffeurs and motorlorry drivers. It would make some of your London drivers stare to see what they will risk. One of them said this war will cause a revolution in motor driving, as, till now, they never had a chance of seeing what a heavy motor-van could do off a macadamized road. They simply go wherever there is room for them, and more than once they have charged patrol parties who tried to capture them, and got through all right. One driver, seeing that the road was blocked, charged a wooden fence and turf wall, and got out of the way of a lorry that the Germans sent at full speed to smash him. The smashing was on the German lorry. Motorcycles also do wonders. They travel like demons, and rarely get hit: Pte. Watts, Cheshire Regiment

The Pathos of It

Administrator — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:03:12 +0000

One dare not think of all the misery, sadness, and sorrow that greets one where the fighting has been; lifelong efforts and struggling dashed to the ground in the space of an hour or so. You quiet English folks, with your beautiful homes and orderly lives, cannot realize what a modern war means. You must spend night after night in cattle trucks, where groaning, dying men are lying on straw; you must imagine the interior of those trucks, only lighted with a dripping oil lamp; you must see the pale, drawn faces and the red-stained limbs; then you must stop and ask yourself if you are really in the twentieth century, or if you are not dreaming. How one gets to love the light and the sun after such nightmares, even when the Germans were so near, and that with the dawn we knew the sing-song of the cannons would start again. I could have yelled with joy at the first signs of daylight: An English Interpreter

The Whip Hand

Administrator — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 08:03:07 +0000

There’s not the least doubt that we have the whip hand of the Germans now, and it’s only a question of time until we knock them under altogether. Their officers simply won’t hear of letting them surrender, and so long as there’s an officer about they’ll stand like sheep and be slaughtered by the thousand. They fear their officers ten times worse than they fear death. When there isn’t an officer about they’re quick enough to surrender. Some of them have been kept marching night and day for days on end. It’s a horrible sight to see some of them used up as they have been; and they hate their officers like poison for what they have had to go through: Private King

Easily the Best

Administrator — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 08:03:09 +0000

Our men are easily the best troops out here, and the Germans are the “rottenest” fighters it is possible to imagine. They fight like devils when you can’t get at them, but when captured (and we have got them wholesale) they try to give one the impression they don’t want to fight, and only do so under compulsion. Our infantry are simply marvellous, especially the “Jocks” and the “Guards.” Taking things on the whole, the Germans rely almost entirely on artillery, and their shells drop like rain without doing a great amount of harm, whilst their infantry are packed like sardines in trenches, and they could not hit the town they were born in: Pte. L. Brown, 18th Hussars