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Read Ebook: The War Stories of Private Thomas Atkins by Milne James
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Ebook has 618 lines and 82954 words, and 13 pages
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"BLOW! BUGLES, BLOW!" 5
I MARCHING TO WAR 9
II THINGS BY THE WAY 14
V CAMPAIGNING IN GENERAL 32
VI BATTLES IN BEING 41
X HIT AND MISSED 92
XX SUMMING IT UP 186
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
"BLOW! BUGLES, BLOW!"
ROBERT BROWNING.
You like song, dear Private Atkins, its lilt and its sentiment, and you have been singing your way through battle, on the hills of France and the plains of Belgium. You are really a poet, as well as a first-rate fighting man, though the very idea will make your camp-fire rock with laughter. Well, in your letters from the war to the old folk and the young folk at home, you have written things worthy to be bound in cloth of gold.
You have, in particular, being a natural fellow, written yourself to them, and you are just splendid, singly and collectively. You look out from your epistles with a smile on your lips, humour in one eye and a touch of the devil in the other, and you cry, "Are we downhearted?" "No!" gladly answer we, who have been listening to the news of battle ringing down the street, and for a moment, perhaps, forgetting you and your writing on the wall with the bayonet point.
You do get the red, living phrases, don't you, Private Atkins? "The hottest thing in South Africa was frost-bitten compared with what's going on here." "The Boer War was a mothers' meeting beside this affair." "Another shell dropped at me and I went like Tod Sloan." "Did you see that German man's face when I told him about our victories? Poor devil! He opened his mouth like a letter-box." No, Thomas, you may not be a scribe, but you "get there," especially when the order comes, "All rifles loaded and handy by your side!"
"It's hard, but it's good," is how you sum up your campaigning, and there goes a bottom truth. "You can't," as you say, "expect a six-course dinner on active service," but you would break your heart to be out of it all. "When I am in the thick of the fire a strange feeling comes over me. I feel and see no danger--I think it is the fighting blood of my forefathers." Yes, and when you receive a rifle bullet through the arm or leg it feels "a bit of a sting," nothing more, "like a sharp needle going into me, but shrapnel hurts--hurts pretty badly." You are not, however, going to let mother, wife, or sweetheart know this, because it would worry them.
You dread to tell them that "when the bullet went in my leg the main artery was severed, and they are going to take part of it off and leave me a cripple for life." Still harder is it to write: "I am wounded, and do not hope to live; I am going and so cannot come home as I hoped; I send all my love." And then there is an echo of infinity and immortality in the thought, "When a fellow gets shot you never think he is gone, but that he will come back." Someone softly starts singing "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and it runs sweetly along the ranks, the muffled prayer of inextinguishable hearts for a soul in flight.
But "Black Marias" and "Jack Johnsons" and "coal-boxes," as you call the enemy's howitzer shells, are driving along, and you accept them with your usual Atkins philosophy. The gun you know as "Aunt Sally" is flopping her big shells at you; "Calamity Jane" salutes you in odd volumes from miles away, and "Belching Billy" chimes in now and then. "Whistling Rufus," whose shells are smaller, is also in the turmoil, but, being without fear of the big brethren, you merely have a contempt for him. Still, the whole roar keeps you from the hour's sleep you are entitled to snatch, and therefore you gently swear at the Kaiser as "William the Weed," nickname Von Kluck "Old Von o'Clock," and grimly subscribe to the Uhlans as "Ewe-lambs." Always you remain the good sportsman, saying, "Put me a shilling on Gravelotte for the Cesarewitch, if this letter is in time"; or, "Fancy Robins drawing the Palace 1--1. Cheers!"
What was it you said when the doctor was bandaging your shattered knee? That you wouldn't be able to play for Maidstone United at Christmas! You had forgotten the remark. Possibly you had also forgotten that four of you, and rather "bad cases," enjoyed "nap" on the top of a Red Cross motor-lorry, all the way to the hospital. One of you contained six bullets, and he said on the operating-table, "There will be enough to make the missus a pair of earrings." Another of you, a big Highlander, had pleaded not to be taken from the firing line because "I have still some shots left and I can do something with them." "Keep smiling" is your motto; "there's only one winner in this game--roll on, England."
You have given your French friends another true taste of yourself in your high spirits, your jollity, your manifestation that the merry heart goes all the day. You have the gift of wonder, which means imagination, and occasions for exercising it, as when the concussion of a shell flung you up into a tree, and your sergeant, missing you and looking around, asked in military language where you had gone! You came down to tell him and couldn't, and thereupon the wonder of the thing seized him also. That incident was of the drawbridge order which links tragedy and humour, for they march together even in the battlefield with you. Serious, nay, grave things may be framing you about, but your eye never misses the rift of humour, and that is good.
There was a shell which lighted on a field kitchen while the master cook was stirring the dinner. It was a near shave for him, but, as he did escape, you mostly recall his rueful appearance as he gathered himself out of the scattered soup. Another of our vignettes is of some cows getting into the battle arena, and of half a dozen infantrymen calmly milking them. "Early doors this way; early doors, ninepence!" you once cried for slogan in a hard charge. When the German searchlights fell on you for the first time, your comment was, "Why, Bill, it's just like a play and us in the limelight." It was the Irish element in you which shouted, "Look at thim divils retraitin' with their backs facin' us," adding, about a lucky shamrock supposed to have been given to the Kaiser by somebody, "Sure, Hinissey, and there'll be a leaf apiece for us when we get to Berlin."
Your philosophy, Private Atkins, cannot be upset even when a shrapnel bullet knocks a few inches out of your arm. No; your lament is that it carries away a tattooed butterfly of which you were very proud. You date your letters from the "Hotel de la Openaires, Rue de Grassies, bed most comfortable and all arrangements up-to-date." You have your little joke all the time, and so when you meet the Foot Guards on a Sunday you ask them which band is playing in the Park? Now and then the joke is against you, but you only enjoy it all the more, which is the final testimony that you are a true humorist.
Perhaps if the joke singles out overmuch you go "all the colours of the rainbow," a lovable thing, because it reveals your modesty. Otherwise you always are in your element, be the field tented white or stricken red. You are the complete knight in khaki, self-respecting, proud of your regiment, a lion-rampant of bravery and resolution, tender-hearted for all suffering; and we shall not forget your simple request, "Think kind of a soldier!" How could we when we know that you have a greater song than "Tipperary," although you only sing it silently to yourselves in the dark watches of the night:
JAMES MILNE
THE WAR STORIES OF PRIVATE THOMAS ATKINS
MICHAEL DRAYTON.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
Keepsakes
Want Nothing
"Cheer, Boys, Cheer"
Couldn't Understand!
Those Highlanders
Her "Soldat"
Delightfully Hungry
Dandy Lads
Flowers and Favours
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp!
Pat's Mishap
A Comparison
Church Bells
Invited Out!
Triumphant
Thinking of Home
BRET HARTE.
Safe!
Perfectly Happy
"Du Pain!"
A Song of a Shirt
Like Rob Roy
On and Off
A Baby Bunting
Early Piety
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