Funny Stories Told by the Soldiers. Case Carleton Britton
Proudfoot Jarvis has been at the Front with the First Canadian Mounted Rifles for three years, and his sense of humor and the joy of life still survive. In a letter dated, “Somewhere in Mud, 17th of Ireland,” he writes to his brother, Paul Jarvis, of New York:
“Dear Old Top:
“I had expected to be in gay (?) Paree on furlough at this time, swinging down the Boys de Belogne with girls de Belogne on each arm, but this is postponed till April. The papers say that von Hindy has ordered dinner for himself and the Crown Prince on April Fools’ day, and, if we meet, there will be a sound of deviltry by night and a Waterloo that will cause the princelet to wireless his dad:
“‘Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these, we’re ”soaked“ again.’
“However that may be, here I am sitting in a shed, with a sheepskin over my shoulders, looking like a lady – but not smelling like one. Fritz is acting rather nasty, sending us his R. S. V. P.’s by the air-line, and we reply P. D. Q., and the ‘wake’ is a howling success as the big bulls and the little terriers ‘barcarole.’ And speaking of wakes, I was awake myself the other night in my hut and the Gothas were whirring overhead and Fritz pulling the string every now and then. It was pitch-dark and a big Bertha had just shaken all creation, when I overheard two ‘blimeys’ fanning buckwheat while they hunted a shell-hole.
“‘Where are yer, Bill?’ asked one.
“I’m ’ere,’ says Bill.
“‘Where’s ’ere?’ says his pal.
“‘Ow the blinkin’ ’ell do I know where ’ere is?’ says Bill.
“Just then Fritz put one alongside of my hut and snuffed out all the candles, but thanks to the good old soft mud – and how we have cussed that mud! – I am writing to you, Old Top, tonight. I expect to be on the hike again in a day or so, I know not where and I do not care. All places look alike to this old kid. They can set me down in a field of mud and inside of forty-eight hours I have got a home fit for a prince, or a ground-hog – sometimes I am living several feet under ground and other times I am living in a tent, a hut, a stable, barn, shed, and, when in luck, in some deserted chateau.”
Jarvis, lying on his back looking up at a twinkling star through a hole in the roof seems to have started a train of verse in his brain, for he writes:
“I got to cogitating about a lot of things, and for the first time in my life I found rimes running through what I am pleased to call my mind. So, I lighted my dip and jotted down the enclosed doggerel. They say it is a bad sign when a man starts to write poetry, but I don’t for a moment think anyone would call this by that name or that I shall even be acclaimed a Backyard Kipling. Besides, as I flourish under the sobriquet ‘Bully Beef,’ owing to my major-general proportions, I am certainly no Longfellow. But here it is, such as it is:
I’ve slept in cradles,
I’ve slept in arms,
I was a baby then —
Unconscious of war’s alarms.
I’ve slept on the prairie
Shooting the duck and the goose,
I’ve slept in the bush
Hunting the elk and the moose.
I’ve slept on steamboats
With my bed on the deck,
And I’ve slept in church
With a kink in my neck.
I’ve slept in fields,
Under the stars,
And I’ve slept on trains
In old box cars.
I’ve slept in beds
Of purple and gold,
I’ve slept out in Flanders
In the mud and the cold.
I’ve slept in dugouts
With the rat and the louse,
And I’ve slept in France
In a fairly good house.
I’ve slept in barns
On beds of straw,
I’ve slept in sheds
Wi nae bed at a’.
I’m sleeping now
On a stretcher of wire,
And I pray my last sleep
Will be near a fire.
I’m tired of the wet,
The mud, and the cold,
And I won’t be sorry
When I sleep in the Fold.
THIS PLEASED THE COLONEL
The sergeant halted the new sentry opposite the man he was to relieve.
“Give over your orders,” he said.
The old sentry reeled off the routine instructions with confidence, but one of the special orders baffled him.
“Come on, man!” said the sergeant impatiently.
“On no account,” stammered the sentry, “are you to let any questionable character pass the lines, except the colonel’s wife.”
DID THE CHAPLAIN SWEAR?
Recently, during the operations of the British Egyptian expeditionary force in Palestine, a town to the south of Beersheba was captured, and in it was discovered a splendid example of mosaic pavement.
The excavation of it was placed in charge of a chaplain, and while the work was proceeding some human bones were discovered.
Elated at the find, the padre immediately wired to great headquarters, saying:
“Have found the bones of saint.”
Shortly after the reply came back:
“Unable to trace Saint in casualty list. Obtain particulars of regimental number and regiment from his identity disk.”
ONE SWEET KISS LOST
Before introducing Lieutenant de Tassan, aid to General Joffre, and Colonel Fabry, the “Blue Devil of France,” Chairman Spencer, of the St. Louis entertainment committee, at the M. A. A. breakfast told this anecdote:
“In Washington Lieutenant de Tassan was approached by a pretty American girl, who said:
“‘And did you kill a German soldier?’
“‘Yes,’ he replied.
“‘With what hand did you do it?’ she inquired.
“‘With this right hand,’ he said.
“And then the pretty American girl seized his right hand and kissed it. Colonel Fabry stood near by. He strode over and said to Lieutenant de Tassan:
“‘Heavens, man, why didn’t you tell the young lady you bit him to death?’”
A COINCIDENCE OF WAR
The commandant of one of the great French army supply depots was busy one morning. He was a man of forty; a colonel in the regular French army. He was talking to an American colonel when an erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and mustache and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve came up, saluted, delivered a message and then asked:
“Are there any more orders, sir?”
When he was told that there were none he brought his heels together with a click, saluted again and