500 of the Best Cockney War Stories. Various
Afghans made off in the other direction. I shouted to Stratton and his men to press down to the foot of the hill, working round to the north so as to cut off the raiders. Then, utterly exhausted, I began my crawl back to the camp.
Soon after I had got in I was summoned into the presence of the redoubtable Bobs. Although I had marched past him at Kohat this was my first face-to-face meeting with one who was to play the part of Providence to my career. He made me sit in a chair and at once performed the almost incredible feat of putting me entirely at my ease. This he did by pouring a golden liquid called sherry into a very large wine-glass. Hardly had I swallowed this elixir when I told him all about everything, which was exactly what he wanted.
A week later the Commander of the Cavalry Brigade, Redan Massy, applied to Headquarters for an Aide-de-Camp. Sir Fred Roberts advised him to take me. That billet led to unimaginable bliss. Surrounding villages by moonlight, charging across the Logar Valley, despising all foot sloggers – every sort of joy I had longed for. The men of the picquet who had run away were tried by Court Martial and got long sentences, alas – poor chaps! The old Mullah was sent to his long account by Stratton.
But that is the point of most war stories; when anyone gets a lift up it is by the misfortune or death of someone else.
1. ACTION
During the third battle of Ypres a German field gun was trying to hit one of our tanks, the fire being directed no doubt by an observation balloon.
On the top of the tank was a Cockney infantryman getting a free ride and seemingly quite unconcerned at Jerry's attempts to score a direct hit on the tank.
As the tank was passing our guns a shrapnel shell burst just behind it and above it.
We expected to see the Cockney passenger roll off dead. All he did, however, was to put his hand to his mouth and shout to those inside the tank: "Hi, conductor! Any room inside? – it's rainin'!" —A. H. Boughton (ex "B" Battery, H.A.C.), 53 Dafforne Road, S.W.17.
A wiring party in the Loos salient – twelve men just out from home. Jerry's Verey lights were numerous, machine-guns were unpleasantly busy, and there were all the dangers and alarms incidental to a sticky part of the line. The wiring party, carrying stakes and wire, made its way warily, and every man breathed apprehensively. Suddenly one London lad tripped over a piece of old barbed wire and almost fell his length.
"Lumme," he exclaimed, "that ain't 'arf dangerous!" —T. C. Farmer, M.C., of Euston Square, London (late of "The Buffs").
I was attached as a signaller to a platoon on duty in an advanced post on the Ypres-Menin Road. We had two pigeons as an emergency means of communication should our wire connection fail.
One afternoon Fritz put on a strafe which blew in the end of the culvert in which we were stationed. We rescued the pigeon basket from the debris and discovered that an egg had appeared.
That evening, when the time came to send in the usual evening "situation report," I was given the following message to transmit:
"Pigeon laid one egg; otherwise situation normal." —D. Webster, 85 Highfield Avenue, N.W.11.
On a bitterly cold, wet afternoon in February 1918 four privates and a corporal were trying to take what shelter they could. One little Cockney who had served in the Far East with the 10th Middlesex was complaining about everything in general, but especially about the idiocy of waging war in winter.
"Wot yer grumblin' at?" broke in the corporal, "you with yer fawncy tyles of Inja? At any rate, there ain't no blinking moskeeters 'ere nor 'orrible malyria."
There was a break in the pleasantries as a big one came over. In the subsequent explosion the little Cockney was fatally wounded.
"Corpril," the lad gasped, as he lay under that wintry sky, "you fergot to menshun there ain't no bloomin' sun-stroke, nor no earfkwikes, neither."
And he smiled – a delightful, whimsical smile – though the corporal's "Sorry, son" was too late. —V. Meik, 107 King Henry's Road, N.W.3.
For seven hours, with little intermission, the German airmen bombed a camp not a hundred miles from Etaples. Of the handful of Q.M.A.A.C.s stationed there, one was an eighteen-year-old middle-class girl, high-strung, sensitive, not long finished with her convent school. Another was Kitty, a Cockney girl of twenty, by occupation a machine-hand, by vocation (missed) a comédienne, and, by heaven, a heroine.
The high courage of the younger girl was cracking under the strain of that ordeal by bombs. Kitty saw how it was with her, and for five long hours she gave a recital of song, dialogue, and dance – most of it improvised – while the bombs fell and the anti-aircraft guns screamed. In all probability she saved the younger girl's reason.
When the last raider had dropped the last bomb, Kitty sank down, all but exhausted, and for long cried and laughed hysterically. Hers was not the least heroic part played upon that night. —H. N., London, E.
During the German attack near Zillebeke in June 1916 a diminutive Cockney, named Samson, oddly enough, received a scalp wound from a shell splinter which furrowed a neat path through his hair.
The fighting was rather hot at the time, and this great-hearted little Londoner carried on with the good work.
Some hours later came the order to fall back, and as the Cockney was making his way down the remains of a trench, dazed and staggering, a harassed sergeant, himself nearly "all in," ordered him to bear off a couple of rifles and a box of ammunition.
This was the last straw. "Strike, sergeant," he said, weakly, "I can't 'elp me name being Samson, but I've just 'ad me perishin' 'air cut!" – "Townie," R.A.F.
When we were at Railway Wood, Ypres Salient, in 1916, "Muddy Lane," our only communication trench from the front line to the support line, had been reduced to shapelessness by innumerable "heavies." Progress in either direction entailed exposure to snipers in at least twelve different places, and runners and messengers were, as our sergeant put it, "tickled all the way."
In the support line one afternoon, hearing the familiar "Crack! Crack! Crack!" I went to Muddy Lane junction to await the advertised visitor. He arrived – a wiry little Cockney Tommy, with his tin hat dented in two places and blood trickling from a bullet graze on the cheek.
In appreciation of the risk he had run I remarked, "Jerry seems to be watching that bit!"
"Watching!" he replied. "'Struth! I felt like I was walking darn Sarthend Pier naked!" —Vernon Sylvaine, late Somerset L.I., Grand Theatre, Croydon.
In March 1918, when Jerry was making his last great attack, I was in the neighbourhood of Petit Barisis when three enemy bombing planes appeared overhead and gave us their load. After all was clear I overheard this dialogue between two diminutive privates of the 7th Battalion, the London Regiment ("Shiny Seventh"), who were on guard duty at the Q.M. Stores:
"You all right, Bill?"
"Yes, George!"
"Where'd you get to, Bill, when he dropped his eggs?"
"Made a blooming concertina of meself and got underneaf me blinkin' tin 'at!" —F. A. Newman, 8 Levett Gardens, Ilford, Ex-Q.M.S., 8th London (Post Office Rifles).
The 47th London Division were holding the line in the Bluff sector, near Ypres, early in 1917, and the 20th London Battalion were being relieved on a very wet evening, as I was going up to the front line with a working party.
Near Hell Fire Corner shells were coming over at about three-minute intervals. One of the 20th London Lewis gunners was passing in full fighting order, with fur coat, gum boots, etc., carrying his Lewis gun, several drums of ammunition, and the inevitable rum jar.
One of my working party, a typical Cockney, surveyed him and said:
"Look!