500 of the Best Cockney War Stories

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Various. 500 of the Best Cockney War Stories

EDITOR'S FOREWORD

SIR IAN HAMILTON'S STORY

1. ACTION

2. LULL

3. HOSPITAL

4. HIGH SEAS

5. HERE AND THERE

Отрывок из книги

The Great War was a matrix wherein many anecdotes have sprouted. They are short-lived plants – fragile as mushrooms – none too easy to extricate either, embedded as they are in the mass.

To dig out the character of a General even from the plans of his General Staff is difficult; how much more difficult to dig out the adventures of Number 1000 Private Thomas Atkins from those of the other 999 who went "like one man" with him over the top? In the side-shows there was more scope for the individual and in the Victorian wars much more scope. To show the sort of thing I mean I am going to put down here for the first time an old story, almost forgotten now, in the hopes that it may interest by its contrast to barrages and barbed wire. Although only an old-fashioned affair of half a dozen bullets and three or four dead men it was a great event to me as it led to my first meeting with the great little Bobs of Kandahar.

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We were doing our usual four days in the front line when one morning an American officer emerged from the communication trench. Just then the Germans opened out with everything from a 5·9 to rifle grenade. We squeezed into funk-holes in the bottom of the trench. Presently there was a lull, and the American officer was heard to ask, "Say, boys, where is the front line in these parts?"

"Tich," a little Cockney from Euston way, extracted himself from the earth, and exclaimed, "Strike! j'ear that? Wot jer fink this is – a blinkin' rifle range?" —W. Wheeler (late 23rd Battalion Royal Fusiliers), 55 Turney Road, Dulwich, S.E.

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