Various 500 of the Best Cockney War Stories

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-96537-514-7
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 214 Seiten

Excerpt: 'On the morning of September 11, 1879, I lay shivering with fever and ague at Alikhel in Afghanistan. So sick did I seem that it was decided I should be carried a day's march back to G.H.Q. on the Peiwar Kotal to see if the air of that high mountain pass would help me to pull myself round. Polly Forbes, a boy subaltern not very long from Eton, was sent off to play the part of nurse. We reached the Peiwar Kotal without any adventure, and were allotted a tent in the G.H.Q. camp pitched where the road between the Kurram Valley and Kabul ran over the high Kotal or pass. Next morning, although still rather weak in the knees, I felt game for a ride to the battlefield. So we rode along the high ridge through the forest of giant deodars looking for mementoes of the battle. The fact was that we were, although we knew it not, in a very dangerous No Man's Land. We had reached a point about two miles from camp when we were startled by half a dozen shots fired in quick succession and still more startled to see some British soldiers rushing down towards us from the top of a steep-sided knoll which crowned the ridge to our immediate front. Close past us rushed those fugitives and on, down the hillside, where at last, some hundred yards below us, they pulled up in answer to our[10] shouts. But no amount of shouts or orders would bring them up to us, so we had to get off our ponies and go down to them. There were seven of them—a Corporal and three men belonging to one of the new short service battalions and three signallers—very shaky the whole lot. Only one was armed with his rifle; he had been on sentry-go at the moment the signalling picquet had been rushed—so they said—by a large body of Afghans. What was to be done? I realised that I was the senior. Turning to the Corporal I asked him if he could ride. 'Yes, sir,' he replied rather eagerly. 'Well, then,' I commanded, 'you get on to that little white mare up there and ride like hell to G.H.Q. for help. You others go up with him and await orders.' Off they went, scrambling up the hill, Forbes and I following rather slowly because of my weakness. When we got up to the path, ponies, syces, all had disappeared except that one soldier who had stuck to his rifle.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Various, Various

Leseproben

1. ACTION
The Outside Fare
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. "Hi, conductor! Any room inside?—it's rainin'!" 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. "Barbed Wire's Dangerous!"
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"). Tale of an Egg
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. "No Earfkwikes"
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. A "Bow Bells" Heroine
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. Samson, but Shorn
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. "What's Bred in the Bone——!"
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. A Very Human Concertina
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). A One-Man Army
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! Blimey, he only wants a field gun under each arm and he'd be a bally division."—Lieut.-Col. J. H. Langton, D.S.O. "Nah, Mate! Soufend!"
During the heavy rains in the summer of 1917 our headquarters dug-out got flooded. So a fatigue party was detailed to bale it out. "Long Bert" Smith was one of our baling squad. Because of his abnormal reach, he was stationed at the "crab-crawl," his job being to throw the water outside as we handed the buckets up to him. It was a dangerous post. Jerry was pasting the whole area unmercifully and shell splinters pounded on the dug-out roof every few seconds. Twenty minutes after we had started work Bert got badly hit, and it was some time before the stretcher-bearers could venture out to him. When they did so he seemed to be unconscious. "Poor blighter!" said one of the bearers. "Looks to be going West." Bert, game to the last, opened his eyes and, seeing the canvas bucket still convulsively clutched in his right fist, "Nah, mate!" he grunted—"Soufend!" But the stretcher-bearer was right.—C. Vanon, 33 Frederick Street, W.C.I. "I Got 'Ole Nelson Beat!"
Several stretcher cases in the field dressing station at the foot of "Chocolate Hill," Gallipoli, awaited removal by ambulance, including a Cockney trooper in the dismounted Yeomanry. He had a bandage round his head, only one eye was visible, and his left arm was bound to his breast with a sandbag. His rapid-fire of Cockney witticisms had helped to keep our spirits up while waiting—he had a comment for everything. Suddenly a "strafe" started, and a shrapnel shell shot its load among us. Confusion, shouts, and moans—then a half-hysterical, half-triumphant shout from the Cockney: "Lumme, one in the blinkin' leg this time. I got 'ole Nelson beat at last!"—J. Coomer (late R.E.), 31 Hawthorn Avenue, Thornton Heath. Two Kinds of Fatalist
A German sniper was busy potting at our men in a front-line trench at Cambrai in March 1918. A Cockney "old sweat," observing a youngster gazing over the parapet, asked him if he were a fatalist. The youngster replied "Yes." "So am I," said the Cockney, "but I believes in duckin'."—"Brownie," Kensal Rise, N.W.10. Double up, Beauty Chorus!
One summer afternoon in '15 some lads of the Rifle Brigade were bathing in the lake in the grounds of the château at Elverdinghe, a mile or so behind the line at Ypres, when German shells began to land uncomfortably near. The swimmers immediately made for the...