Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 55

All these three days I record in one since I have had no time at all in which to write them up separately. It has been a rush from morning to night, trying to arrange something for the men and here we are at the end of it with nothing done. There is no room for a concert. There is no beer for the men, nothing but a bar of chocolate apiece, some tinned fruit and a packet of Woodbines. It is pretty sickening and so unnecessary.^iv

By a little arrangement at HQ it could have all been so different and the battalion could have enjoyed a regular blow-out and appreciated it more than anything. Every other battalion in the brigade has done it except us. It is marvellous that the men can raise a smile at all. Yet they can and do. They are always cheery.

We officers had quite a decent Christmas Eve. I think every company in the battalion came in to see us and we sat up till midnight to see the 25th in. Then we drank to absent friends and thought pretty hard. We did the same at Dinner today. What a Christmas Dinner it was! How different from the old time-honoured institution at home. Yet we ate it with due solemnity, thinking all the while of our own, dear, clean, rosy-cheeked women across the water.

One good feature of this war is that it will cause many a thousand men to appreciate our England. For myself, I have groused at her and called her hard names but, when I return, if I am discontent at any time and feel inclined to rail at her I shall think of this filthy, malodorous country and call myself a fool.

The post has just come in bringing me a parcel from your mother full of almonds and raisins and dried fruits galore.^v Good egg. We will gorge ourselves upon them this evening and have a snap-dragon and lots of fun. A tune strummed out on the piano, a dish of snap-dragon and a jolly lot of pals around him and what more can a man want? Only one thing. The girl he loves. But never mind next Christmas will come in its time and then we shall know how to appreciate it the more.

Diversity is the spice of one’s life I believe. If so I have just had an extra hamper. There was a crash in the kitchen. The three girls came running into me in a very excited and frightened state. ‘Les soldats sont très malharde, [malade] m’sieur!’ I go forth. Smith,^vi our cook, I find sitting on the range, our potatoes on the floor before him, an inane grin on his face the while he declares with somewhat blurred emphasis the fact that ‘he doesn’t believe there’s a … German this side of the Rhine at all’.

I ordered him out to bed. He saluted, said, ‘And ’bout time too, Capton’, and promptly subsided in the hearth where he gave way to uncontrollable laughter. I shout for Bunting, my trusty henchman, but remain unanswered. I shout, again. The reply is a most appalling crash. I rush into the scullery and find Bunting, my trusted man, the husband of a wife and father of a family, on hands and knees in the midst of a paralysing tangle of unwashed debris. With his head beneath the drip-board, he commenced ‘’pologising for disgrashfell ’dition’. I cursed him for a low beast, and returned to Smith. The latter was already preparing for slumber ’mongst the cinders. With my own hands I pulled them up and kicked their posteriors out of the back-door.

Later I heard from Oldham^vii that both the delinquents had fallen in the duck-pond. C’est très triste. I am afraid they will smell most atrociously tomorrow.

The British Tommy is something of a gross animal. I think he is drunk en masse tonight. It is terrible. Yet I cannot find it in my heart to blame him. God knows he has enough to put up with. And I cannot help but love him, even though he sits on the range and desires to slumber in the ash-pan.^viii