500 of the Best Cockney War Stories. Various
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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.