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Updated: May 5, 2025
Whoever heard of a grown-up wearing a sash? It was a great blue silk thing, wound round once or twice, and tied with a great bow, the ends of which hung down in front. Of all the Pip-squeaks! And yet the big man's face was not that of a Pip-squeak far from it. It was very like Grumper's in fact. The boy liked the face.
So by the summer of '15 most of the divisions had their dramatic entertainments: "The Follies," "The Bow Bells," "The Jocks," "The Pip-Squeaks," "The Whizz-Bangs," "The Diamonds," "The Brass Hats," "The Verey Lights," and many others with fancy names. I remember going to one of the first of them in the village of Acheux, a few miles from the German lines.
I noticed by fresh shell-holes that Bosche had a rather bad habit of annoying the place with his pip-squeaks, but generally they only resulted in scoring a Blighty for more or one of the occupants and, for others, they were a source of amusement in the shape of gambling on the spot the next one would fall.
"Yes," resumed "Pongo," while Joe Bates was lighting his cigarette, "this ain't what you'd call war. I wouldn't mind goin' for ole Fritz with an 'ammer, but, what with 'owitzers and 'crumps, and 'Black Marias, and 'pip-squeaks' and 'whizz-bangs, the infantry bloke ain't got a chanst. 'Ere 'ave I been in a bloomin' trench for six months, and what 'ave I used my bay'nit for?
"Do you mean to say," Robert exclaimed, "that the Slowcoach isn't ours at all?" "Yes," said Janet. "It belongs to those measly pip-squeaks?" said Robert. "Yes," said Janet. Robert held his head in a kind of stupor. They had a very solemn tea. Everyone was depressed and mortified. "We couldn't help it, could we, mother?" Janet said several times. "Of course not," said Mrs. Avory.
They were going back to the trenches after a spell in a rest-camp, to the same old business of whizz-bangs and pip-squeaks, and dugouts, and the smell of wet clay and chloride of lime, and the life of earth-men who once belonged to a civilization which had passed. And they went whistling on their way, because it was the very best thing to do.
They shelled the roads down which our transport wagons went at night, and the communication trenches to which our men moved up to the front lines, and gun-positions revealed by every flash, and dugouts foolishly frail against their 5.9's, which in those early days we could only answer by a few pip-squeaks.
The Warren was a regular network of trenches, burrows, and funk holes, and we needed them all. The position was downhill from the Huns, and they kept sending over and down a continuous stream of "pip-squeaks", "whiz-bangs", and "minnies." The "pip-squeak" is a shell that starts with a silly "pip", goes on with a sillier "squeeeeee", and goes off with a man's-size bang.
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