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Updated: June 15, 2025
Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe, under any conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such was the impression. The British officers and even the British Tommies were blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five o'clock tea," as the French delight to call it. That these could have come direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable.
The play happened to be "The Better 'Ole"; and from the moment the curtain rose Eleanor was oblivious to everything but the humor and pathos and glory of the story. She followed with ready tears and smiles the adventures of the three Tommies; she thrilled to the sentimental songs beside the stage camp fire; she laughed at the antics of the incomparable Corporal Bill.
No; these dour, stolid men take their fighting sadly and sternly; there is none of the "frolic welcome" with which our Irish Tommies, for instance, enjoy their fighting or endure the waiting for it.
Walsh did not reply at once, and one of the "Tommies" standing close by said, "Both killed, sor." This information was a terrible blow to me. Major Orr, of the Royal Irish Regiment, was in charge of the force that had captured me, and presently I was taken before him.
It is not good for troops to sup entirely on horrors and also to breakfast and lunch on them. So after in the trenches one regiment has been pounded it is withdrawn for a day or two and kept in reserve. The English Tommies spend this period of recuperating in playing football and cards.
The soldiers, however, made light of their situation, although we learned that many of the Tommies, from lack of accommodation, had been compelled to spend the night in the open.
The Tommies grabbed them in their arms, hugged them, slapped them on the backs and chests until the wind was fairly knocked out of them, and if we had been Frenchmen instead of Britishers, our mouths would have been covered with black grease from kisses imprinted on their cheeks.
Some of the Tommies, first getting permission from the Sergeant, went into the machine-gunners' dugout, and wrote letters home, saying that in the morning, they were going over the top, and also that if the letters reached their destination it would mean that the writer had been killed.
Perhaps it's partly an economic objection, because I used to get savage in India when any of the Tommies' lives were thrown away by careless handling." "It was your soldiers' business to be made use of, wasn't it?" "Yes," said Blake, frowning; "but there's a difference between that and the other thing. It's the needless waste of life and talent that annoys me.
The Elspeths of this world always have some man to devote himself to them. If the Tommies pass away, the Davids spring up. For my own part, I think Elspeth would have found some excuse for Tommy. He said so himself to the doctor, for he wanted her to be told. "Or you would find the excuse for her in time," David responded. "Very likely," Tommy said. He was humble enough now, you see.
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