Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3831/News from the Back of the Front
Northern France.
As you will see from our address, here we are among the War Correspondents. But there is a mistake somewhere; either there are not enough Germans to go round, or else they—Headquarters, you know—simply hate the idea of throwing the flower of the British Army into the full glare of the shrapnel. Anyhow, we haven't actually been engaged yet, though our Private Smithson has collected three bits of shrapnel and a German rifle; and we have all heard artillery fire (off). Which makes us think that these rumours of war aren't just a scare got up to help recruiting.
Some doubt exists among us as to our precise function out here. Here we are (as I may have mentioned) a magnificent battalion of young giants, complete with rifles—every man has at least one and Private Smithson has two—webbing equipment, cummerbunds, mufflers, cameras, sleeping caps (average, six per man) and even boots; and yet they can't decide exactly what to do with us. Mind you, we are absolute devils for a fight; we have already been reserve troops to five different divisions and thought nothing of it. We are not quite sure whether we get five medals for this or one medal with five bars. Not that we really care; such considerations do not affect us. As Edward—the mascot of the section—observed to me the other day, "I don't care two beans about medals; I want to go home."
But you ask what do we actually do? Let no man believe that we are out here on a holiday. On the contrary we give ourselves over entirely to warlike pursuits. Some days we slope arms by numbers; and other days we clean dixies and indent for new boots. Night by night we guard our approaches and prod the tyres of oncoming motors with fixed bayonets. Every morning the man who held up General French tells us about it with bated breath over our bated breakfasts. It is one of the finest traditions of the corps that General French is held up by us every night. We have our own sentries' word for it. This is especially interesting in view of the persistent reports that he is in a totally different part of France. As he gives a different name every night and varies considerably in appearance we feel that there must be something behind it all.
Thompson, who is no end of a fire-eater and wants to be invalided home with a bullet in his left shoulder—he is engaged—has invented a scheme for getting to the front by sheer initiative. Our officers have quite a pedantic veneration for orders, field-marshals and other obsolete pink apron-strings. We are thus thrown back on our sergeants, a fine body of men whose one weakness is an enthusiasm for chocolate. Acting on this knowledge certain tactful and public-spirited privates in our midst will present the sergeants with two sticks of chocolate per sergeant on the understanding that they thereafter form the battalion into fours and march them circumstantially to the trenches. There are, by all accounts, such supplies of these that a few here and there are bound to be empty. Having occupied these we will all expose our left shoulders, and, having gleaned a whole shrubbery of laurels, return to Divisional H.-Q. The sergeants, such as survive, will then be court-martialled and shot at dawn, while the rest of the regiment will be honourably exiled to England in glorious disgrace. All that remains is for Thompson to approach the sergeants with chocolate.