Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/55

January 6, 1915.]



Somewhere in .

service is like oratory in that one of its biggest ideas is action. Being ostensibly on active service ourselves we felt we ought to see a little before going home; and now we have. We make no boast about it. Like the simple English soldiers we are we merely state the fact for what it is worth.

You ask, you who lead the sheltered life, what we felt like under fire; how you swim from one trench to another; what we ate and drank; and what a bayonet charge is really like. Let me answer your questions one by one.

(1) We were such a long way under fire that some doubt existed as to whether the Germans were merely trying to frighten us, or were engaged in testing new rifles and fired high and in no particular direction for fear of hitting somebody. We only had one casualty and he wanted to walk across to the German trenches and insist on an apology and a new pair of boots, the right heel being practically torn off. But we convinced him that it was futile for an Englishman to argue with Germans, especially when ignorant of their language. If a German has made up his mind to be careless nothing will stop him. To return to the question, we didn't feel under fire at all.

(2) You aren't allowed to leave trench; and a man who was allowed to and then went to another shouldn't be allowed out at all.

(3) The soldier is not particular about his "tack"—as he calls his food. Bacon and eggs, sausages, chicken, washed down with hot coffee, are good enough for him to fight on. Failing even such humble comestibles he will, when pressed by hunger, open a tin of bully beef and decide he is not hungry after all.

(4) Bayonet charges are getting rather cheap, so we didn't have one.

We were opposed to the flower of the German army, the beloved Prussians. This we were told on our arrival. Next day we learned that a prisoner taken turned out to be one of the beloved Bavarians. We subsequently discovered—well, to save time you might just take a map of the German Empire and pick where you like.

If anyone tells you that our heroes live in trenches like tessellated boudoirs in an atmosphere of sybaritic luxury you might just put him right. Our Edward had got hold of some such idea from diagrams in the illustrated papers. When we reached the crumbling ruins we were to defend, an officer was so impressed by Edward's air of woebegone disgust that he observed brusquely that, in the trenches, comfort was a matter of minor importance.

This assurance pulled Edward together for the moment; and he had just settled down to a placid expectation of the evening meal when we learned that our commissariat had stuck in the mud some miles back. However, as a second officer cheerfully observed, in the trenches food is a matter of minor importance. Edward, who had pinned all his faith on the commissariat, relapsed into a resigned melancholy.

Just as he was making his poor but ingenious preparations for slumber in a dug-out that looked like a badly drained pond a third officer came along. A digging fatigue was wanted for the 