WHEN TOMMY LAUGHS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 220, 24 February 1915, Page 6

WHEN TOMMY LAUGHS.

LEAVES FROM AN OFFICER'S LETTERS. The following anecdotes are collected from the letters home of a British oil; cer and are filled, with that unqueiieli able spirit of cheerfulness which is char acteristic of our soldiers at tlie front It was oil board the old tub that toe.i; some of us across to France, and oil tin. well deck stood a taxicab only lateij removed from its Piccadilly haunts. it stood its driver who had piloted it through London streets; lie was an old ish mail, rather inclined to embonpoint "The further oil' from England the more depressed I grow," seemed to be his version of "Alice in Wonderland." Aftei spending some hours wandering round his cab hj" seated himself at the wheel and i was soon nodding.

Tommy, noticing this, went behind his cab and blew a shrill blast on the whistle Waking with a start, lie, dashed to the fro-.lt of his car and seized the starting 'mnd'e. A -car of laughter sudanldv made him realise that lie was in mid-ocean.

"You are allowed to write home, but | net allowed to say where you arc." So ran the order. This did not please Tommy at all. He was particularly keen on letting his friends know his whereabouts, and lie thought it would be a simple matter to elude the censor by means of picture postcards'posted in various pil-lar-bo:: ;; throughout the. town of Rouen. Unfevlunately for them, anything addressd to England had to go through the English censor's office. The fa-emite card was a photograph of some sculpture in that town representing Adam and Eve. In the evening I was in the Censor's office myself. Iler-.. three officers were working with their coats off, the letters and cards that failed to pass being thrown on the floor, and they were up to their knees in picture post cards of Adam and Eve.

The scene was a Belgian hairdresser's shop. There was in the chair, enveloped in a sheet, having his hair cut. a British colonel. Enter a countryman, quite unaware that the British were encamped on the other side of the town, lie proceeded to tell the barber, among other news about the British, that the English force had not come to help then; and never would come. This was too much for the barber, even though in the middle of his job. Seizing tlie sheet, he jerked it aside, revealing the khaki-clad figure beneath to the astonished countryman.

"Voila," Paul the barber, striking a dramatic attitude, "now who says the British Army has not arrived?" This left the poor colonel blushing to the roots of his partly cut hair.

'During the night at Mons Oermnn and English troops got so close to one another in (he dark that only the canal separated them. During a lull in tile firing five Tommies of the —— Regiment fell asleep behind a havstaek, and when they awoke it viiu to find that, it was daylight and that the rest of the!" regiment had retired while it was yet dark. Plainly to their ears came the guttural talk of the Germans on the other other side of the canal.

One.of them, peeping round the corner of the havstaek, surveyed the situation and excitedly told his companions that the Germans were all busy preparing breakfast, imagining that not a Britisher was within three miles of them, and just opposite (hem was a. German major, a fat, tubby, littlu figure, wearing spectacles, sitting on the bank with his feet dangling in the watrr. smoking a big pipe. Fierce then grew the whispered argument as to which of the five was to "pot" th" major. The senior claimed the honor ,the junior ,too, as hp said he saw him first. Finally, all five drew a boa 1 ; on the unfortunate officer and fired. They then in the ensuing confusion ran like hares, and in snitc of the hail of bullets the five got clean awav. "But," I said, "you might have shot four Germans and the officer."

"Yes sir, but we don't often get the chance of a real German officer."

It was night and I was sleeping on a bit of straw in tile old farmyard. I awoke suddenly on hearing a voice; a light flashed in the dark for an instant, then went out, then came again, only quickly to disappear. My first thought was that it was a German signalling; then a soft voice said:

"Arrah, now be still, will you, or it's after getting liurt iiiKterid of killed you will lie, be jabbers." I turned my electric torch towards the face, and in tile ray of light I saw a iighre in khaki 011 all fours, carrying a rifle with a fixed bayonet, crawling painfull round a cart in pursuit of a largo white fat duck which waddled in front of liini, and which he was trying; to bayonet with the aid of an electric torch.

It was during the great retreat: a Herman aeroplane had twice passed over us, flying coolly down the length of our column. Thousands of rounds were excietdly fired off at him, which appeared not to worry him at all, as he sailed placidly on his tour of discovery along the length of the column. After each shot, Tommy would exclaim, "That hit t he beggar," or ''Did von see him flinch V "That made him wobble,'' and so 011 until the unfortunate pilot should have been like a Gruycre chees for holes. A little later when he had flown out of range, we saw his suddenly volplane rapidly to earth about two miles distant from us.

"Told you so," was the shout from nearly every Tommy up the line. "1 knew 1 hit him," "1 saw him distinctly swerve." etc. A little later on we halted between two steep banks, and suddenly a redtrousered Zouave with his rifle slung across his back, appeared 011 the bank above us.

With unsurpassable swagger, he shouted down to us, 'Holoa, mes amis, avez-vous vu l'aerplan, 1111 coup de moi, il' s'est; tombe'v" Crossing the road, he climbed to the. opposite bank, and, kissing his haul jauntily to us, said "Au revoir, je vais chcrchcr d'autres," and with a walk like nothing on earth away he went. "What's the bloke say:" said a Tommy near me.

"He says lie fetched tilll>f.'lit'T down with one shot, and has wn ■ to look for mure." <;iiid im li.A.'U.v. orderly v.'ho could talk a liUb Viw'.i. I'eor Tommy, lie was too t:ik«;n aback to say anything. The funniest part of :t was that the ('ri nnm had been fore. :! to cenie down owii.fr to engine trouble. In I'tc trenches and en Hie retreat many of Ote soldiers lost their hats. .•'.l'd tin- va is iKnnk^ir rolled into usp was most*? urioun, onarl all contributed by local inhabitants. Seme wari* woollen slcciniiir cj*ps. then i here wviv straw hats, slouch hats, i>Tcen "trilbys." and one soldier went as far as as a j;lossy top hat. The latter was too much for hi -, officer, who ordered him to discard it. So it was thrown into the ditch, only to he seen later on, badlv conccrtinaed. on the curly head of a kilted Scotsman. The climax came when this same

>':■<:{smnu wnt to the aid of one of the Ihon-amls of refugees that were marchu<": with us. A i»oor greybeard was wheelimr his old wife along the road in a wheelbarrow, and the next thing: i saw was the Scottie 111 his top hat wheeling her along, pathetic and yet ludicrous.