something that is noticed by all who have served at the front is the drollery of the men in dangerous or uncomfortable surroundings. sometimes it is good-natured, sometimes ill-tempered and critical, but it is ever present. one cannot but believe that the wag of the company is better than a tonic to the men, in fact is almost as good a pick-me-up as the rum ration. who has not felt the benefit of a good laugh? who has not seen a well-developed sense of humor save a difficult situation, or at least alleviate it?
with tommy the humor crops out in the most unexpected situations. under circumstances in which the ordinary man would turn ghastly pale, tommy cracks a joke. crossing an open space toward a railway embankment i was fifty yards or so from a culvert through which i had intended passing, when a soldier reached it. he was carrying a load on his back, and was sucking on a pipe, his head bowed in thought. a whizz bang shrieked by me, and struck just at the entrance to the culvert, missing him only by inches. fortunately it banged into the earth four or five feet beyond his position at the moment, so that the fragments spread from him, not towards him. he had escaped death by a hairbreadth. he stopped in his path, took his pipe from his mouth, raised his head and looked with a surprised air at the hole in the ground made by the bursting shell. his only comment was uttered in a slow voice:
"well, i'll—be—jiggered!" and putting his pipe back into his mouth, he coolly resumed his walk and his meditation, without altering his course by one inch. thus do men come to accept narrow escapes from death as a matter of course, where such escapes are as common as is plum jam in the rations.
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the men are plodding along in thick tenacious mud, carrying sixty-pound trench mortars, each foot with its accumulated mud weighing at least twenty pounds, and feeling as if it weighed a ton. they are sweating, and blowing, and tired. they halt for a rest and lean up against the wet, muddy wall of the trench, carelessly chucking the heavy mortars into the mud. then the wag begins by cursing the bally war, consigning the officers to perdition, condemning the food as unfit for "villyuns," and wishing the kaiser "wuz in 'ell." "and the blighters hexpect hus to stand an' face the henemy. an' ye betcher life we'll do it too, coz we couldn't run if we want to: we're stuck in the mud!" a smile passes along the tired faces; their rest is over, and more or less rejuvenated, they take up their burdens and pass on.
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coming out of the front lines one day when we were relieved by another battalion, my corporal and i were going along a support trench when we came up with some officers of our battalion who were leaning against the parapet, waiting for the germans to let up shelling the trench twenty-five yards in advance of us. we joined the other officers, and were soon joined by about sixty men who were trying to get out the same way. the germans were persistent, so we all finally turned back to go out by another trench. the shells followed us along the trench, for which reason none of us slackened our pace. as we hurried along a rich scotch voice said loudly enough for all to hear:
"by g——, these hun shells are better than the pipes to make us march."
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passing along a muddy support trench, returning from a tour of inspection, we came upon a fatigue or working party of soldiers digging an ammunition dump. they were working on a ridge, and as it was a bright day they could be seen much of the time by the german snipers and might at any moment get some shells or bullets thrown into their midst. it was hard, dirty and dangerous work, but bantering voices reached us:
"what did you do in the great war, papa?" asks one.
"i dug 'oles, m'son," replies another.
"but that's not as bad as 'avin' 'oles dug in ye," adds a third.
"you're bally-well right, it's not," says a fourth. and the work proceeds.
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humor, of course, is not limited to the ordinary ranks, o.r.'s as they are called officially. our battalion was putting on a big raid, "a show." in the end it was carried out very successfully, but owing to the fact that it was a daylight raid, and that a smoke barrage was to be employed, the wind had to be taken into account, and the raid was put off from time to time. code words had to be arranged to be telephoned by brigade to the battalion. codes are employed because of the danger of the germans picking up the messages by a special apparatus for that purpose. an english officer present at the meeting to discuss plans suggested the following code which was employed:
if the raid was to be indefinitely postponed the word asquith was to be used, meaning, wait and see. the word haldane was employed with the signification, put off until tomorrow. and when it was finally decided to be put on, lloyd george was the code word which meant, to be carried out at once.
anyone familiar with british politics during the war will agree that it was rather a neat code.
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and it is said that a french canadian commanding officer, in whose battalion a murder had been committed, had inserted in his orders of the day the following bit of unconscious humor:
"it is to be regretted that a murder has been committed in this battalion. this is the second murder in our canadian forces. it is to be distinctly understood that this pernicious habit must cease forthwith."
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many amusing stories are told of the contents of letters censored at the front. usually all the letters of a company or section are censored by the officers of the company or section. one of the best stories was told me by an english officer. a tommy of his section wrote to his beloved:
"dear maggie: i'd a bally sight rather be in your arms than in this trench with a dead german!"
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i sat one evening smoking a cigar with a canadian colonel who was much incensed at the fact that he had served at gallipoli where he caught an infectious diarrhea of which he nearly died, while in the meantime his other officers who served no better than he were decorated and promoted.
"manion," he said to me in an angry voice, "i was promised that if i went to the mediterranean i would get promotion and any decoration they could get for me, and the only d—— thing i got was dysentery, and i wouldn't have got that if my superior officers had had the giving of it."
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a rather good story with a touch of dry humor provoked by a desire for justice is that of the lonesome soldier. one of our tommies sent an advertisement to an english daily in which he hinted, rather than said, that he was a duty-loving briton, honorably doing his bit, and being without friends in the world he would welcome a correspondence with some english girl. he implied that, as the diet was rough, a few comforts would not go amiss, signing his advertisement, "h.h., a lonesome soldier." he was rewarded by a mail large enough for horatio bottomley, accompanied by so many parcels that our mail department had to add another man to its staff to handle his portion. instead of imitating the generosity of these english girls, and sharing his ill-gotten gains with his companions, he chose the selfish part, keeping most of the good things for himself, giving away only what he had no possible use for. and what was still worse, he started a correspondence with each of the priceless young things who had offered him their goods and their friendship. had this been a fair and square correspondence it might have had nothing to condemn it. but though uneducated, he was sly enough to suit his letters to their recipients. to one he implied the possibility of a strong attachment; to another he was more reserved, speaking only of friendship; while to a third he would send a warm, date-making epistle, hinting at cozy hotels; all according to what he thought their letters to him showed him of their characters.
this went on for some time, the lonesome soldier writing many letters daily, all franked by a kindly government, and all to be censored by a group of h.q. officers. the friendships he had worked up were getting more friendly, the intrigues deeper, and the passions warmer, when major e—— decided that in fairness to the young women and in justice to the wily tommy he would put an end to this planning and plotting. so, in censoring the letters major e—— saw that the warm, passionate letter to "my beloved maisie" was, by mistake, of course, put into the envelope of "dear miss jones;" miss jones' letter put into that of "darling kiddo," and the latter's into "my own emmey's," and so on. the result was a rapid cessation of the letters and parcels to the lonesome soldier, and the straightening out of what otherwise might have been an interminable tangle. to the really lonesome soldier—and there are such—all consideration is due, but to such a one as this may justice arrive swiftly, as it did to him.
potash is a north american indian. he was chief of his tribe, is very intelligent, well educated, and the best sharpshooter in his battalion. his intelligence is proven by the fact that he has never indulged in alcoholic drink, nor has he in any other manner allowed his close association with us whites of canada to deprave him. in other words, he is a living refutation of the remark that the only good indian is a dead indian. if it were not for the copper tinge to his skin, one would take him for what he is,—a well-informed, educated north american. he is very proud of the fact that sir wilfrid laurier, when premier of canada, presented to him and his bride at their wedding a silver tea set.
being the only indian in his battalion he is treated with a good deal of consideration by all. colonel blank stood chatting to him one day, the center of a group of officers.
"you are an indian, potash. tell me why it is that alcohol has such a bad effect upon indians in general."
"you know, sir," seriously replied potash, "that alcohol acts principally on the tissues of the brain. and so, the indians having more brains than the whites, alcohol has a greater effect on them." the colonel and potash joined in the general laugh.
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often shells do not explode, and tommy calls them "duds," but up to the declaration of war by the united states in april last, these duds often got the nickname, "american shells—too proud to fight."
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in the lines one often finds evidence of a prejudice against officers of the staff—nicknamed "brass hats" by the boys—this prejudice being due to the fact that tommy looks upon staff jobs as being safety-first positions, and that the man in the line thinks, rightly or wrongly, that too many young fellows who should be doing their bit under fire remain at the rear through family pull or connection. there is also the impression that many of the staff only get under fire when they absolutely have to. of course this is a much exaggerated idea, but that it exists is shown by the following humorous conversation overheard in the lines:
"say, bill, did you hear that peace has been declared?"
"naw; nothin' to it; hot air; no sich luck."
"sure it has. didn't ye see those two brass hats goin' along the trenches just now?"
the tommies call their helmets "tin hats," and on a certain occasion one soldier was heard to ask another if he thought a tin hat as safe as a brass hat.
of course in a war such as that of today mistakes are inevitable at times. occasionally battalions or companies are ordered to accomplish the impossible. the charge of the light brigade has repeated itself more than once, and the staff get the credit, or discredit, for these mistakes. sometimes it is the orders which cause the wag of the company to speak of these officers with his fine contempt. everyone has seen bairnsfather's picture of a subaltern under heavy fire in the front line, and at the same time having to answer a telephone message as to how many cans of apple jam had been sent in the rations in the past week. it seemed, no doubt, a ridiculous exaggeration, but is no more ridiculous than an order which came through one day to test out a certain rat poison, a sample of which accompanied the order. the battalion receiving this command was at the time holding a very bad bit of line where the germans did much sniping and dropping over of pineapples, rum jars, whizz bangs, and so forth. the battalion was to test this poison with particular reference to the following points:
1. adequacy of eight tins per 1,000 yards of trench.
2. amount of bait consumed.
3. number of sick or dead rats seen.
4. post-mortem examination of dead rats.
5. as to diminution of rat population, "staleness of rat holes might be taken as corroborative evidence of diminution."
then followed three foolscap pages of typewritten directions along this line. (foolscap in the foregoing is not intentionally sarcastic.)
do you wonder that the men made jokes? imagine, if you can, a battalion under very heavy fire night and day trying to carry out tests that might easily be carried out behind the lines as to the efficiency of a rat poison. imagine a medical officer, while not attending the wounded or sick, doing post-mortem examinations of dead rats, or estimating "the staleness of rat holes," with, perhaps, a german sniper trying to get a bead on him!
of course such an order as this, written by some theorist in a comfortable room two or three hundred miles from the bursting shells, would usually be stopped by the practical men of the staff. when one has inadvertently filtered through, as in this case, can those in the lines be blamed for talking about foolkillers? as is to be expected, the order was ignored until the battalion some time later received a reminder. they protested that this test was surrounded by too many difficulties, and were told to "try it on a small scale."
the gruff voice of the regimental sergeant major said that he supposed they would send up "some small scale rats to try it on." as they were not forthcoming, that is as far as the order got.
but though staff officers are disliked almost as much as medical officers, tommy must bear with them, even if it be with a poorly disguised sneer of disgust and tolerance; for an army without a staff would be as incredible and undesirable as sick and wounded without attention. no doubt, in spite of tommy's humor and banter, when the truth is told, both of the above types perform their duties as ably as they can according to their lights.
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while dining with the officers of c company one evening, i heard two of that company's likable young subalterns arguing as to whether the rum ration, so popular with most of the men out there on cold winter nights, would, after the war, conduce to temperance in the nation. the argument grew quite hot, as it often did there, and one of the debaters stuck his helmet on his head, and strode to the entrance of the dugout where he turned and clinched the argument with the sneering remark:
"by gad, smith, you know less about more things than any other man i've ever met," then made a victorious exit.
and speaking of the rum ration, an old soldier once told me that, being the oldest man in his platoon, the serving out of the rum usually fell to his lot, whereupon he always took from his haversack a little tin vessel which held just the right amount for each man, thus showing his absolute fairness and impartiality. but, as he poured the liquor into the little cup, he kept his thumb on the inside, so that at the end of serving some thirty or forty of his comrades he had thirty or forty "thumbs" of the beverage left as his portion—a form of humor, no doubt, better appreciated by himself than it would have been by the rest of his platoon, had they known how absolutely (im-) partial he always was, to himself.
