500 of the Best Cockney War Stories

In August 1915, our Division was moved to the Loos area in preparation for the battle which began on September 25, and I well remember the long march which brought us to our destination – the mining village of Nœux-les-Mines, about a mile from Mazingarbe.

We ended the hard and tiring journey at a spot where a huge slag-heap towered above our heads to a height of seventy or eighty feet. On our arrival here there were the usual fatigue parties to parade, and with everyone tired and weary this was an unthankful duty.

The youngest Cockney in my section, who was always cheerful, hearing me detailing men for fatigue, shouted out, "Come on, mites; paride with spoons and mess-tins. The blinking fattygue party will shift this perishin' slag-heap from 'ere to Mazingarbe." —Herbert W. Bassett (Cpl. attached 47th London Division), 41 Argyle Road, Sevenoaks, Kent.

Teaching Bulgars the Three-card Trick

At Butkova, on the right of Lake Doiran, in 1917, we had surprised the Bulgar and had pushed forward as far as the foot of the Belashitsa Mountains, the reserve position of the enemy.

After a sharp encounter we retired, according to plan, and on the return to our lines we heard murmurings in a nullah to our right.

Motioning to me and the section corporal, our platoon commander advanced cautiously towards the nullah and you can imagine our surprise when we discovered "Dido" Plumpton calmly showing the "three-card trick" to the two Bulgar prisoners he had been detailed to escort. He was telling his mystified audience: "Find der lidy – dere you are – over yer go – under yer go —nah find 'er!" —Alfred Tall (late 2nd East Kents), 204 Hoxton Street, N.1.

3. HOSPITAL

"Tich" Meets the King

In a large ward in a military hospital in London there was a little Cockney drummer boy of eighteen years who had lost both legs from shell fire. In spite of his calamity and the suffering he endured from numerous operations for the removal of bone, he was one of the cheeriest boys in the ward.

At that time many men in the ward had limbs amputated because of frost-bite, and it was quite a usual thing for a visitor to remark, "Have you had frost-bite?"

Nothing made Tich so furious as the suggestion that he should have lost his limbs by any, to his mind, second-rate way. If he were asked, "Have you had frost-bite?" he would look up with disgust and reply, "Naow – a flea bit me!" If, however, he was asked, "Were you wounded?" he would smile and say, "Not 'arf!"

A visit was expected from the King, and the Tommies kept asking Tich what he would say if the King said, "Have you had frost-bite?" "You wite!" said Tich.

I was standing with the Sister near to Tich in his wheel-chair when the King approached. His Majesty at once noticed Tich was legless, and said in his kind way, "Well, my man, how are you getting on?"

"Splendid, sir!" said Tich.

"How did it happen?" asked the King.

"Wounded, sir – shell," replied Tich, all smiles.

Tich's opinion of the King soared higher than ever. —M. A. Kennedy (late V.A.D., Royal Military Hospital, Woolwich), 70 Windmill Hill, Enfield, Middlesex.

Putting the Lid on It

It was "clearing day" at the 56th General Hospital, Wimereux. Nurses and orderlies were having a busy morning getting ready the patients who were going to Blighty. Nearly all of them had been taken out to the waiting ambulances except my Cockney friend in the bed next to mine, who had just had an arm amputated and was very ill.

Two orderlies came down the ward bearing a stretcher with an oblong box fixed on to it (to prevent jolting while travelling). They placed it beside my friend's bed, and, having dressed him, put him in the box on the stretcher. Then a nurse wrapped him up in blankets, and after she had finished she said: "There you are. Feeling nice and comfortable?"

"Fine," said he, "but don't put the lid on before I have kissed the orderly good-bye." —E. C., Hackney, E.8.

Riddled in the Sands

One of the finest exhibitions of Cockney spirit I saw during the war occurred in Mesopotamia after the Battle of Shaiba (April 1915), in which we had completely routed the Turkish army.

We were busy evacuating the wounded in boats across the six-mile stretch of water which separated us from Basra. A sergeant who had been hit by no fewer than six machine-gun bullets was brought down in a stretcher to be put in one of the boats. As I superintended this manœuvre he said to me: "Don't drop me in the water, sir. I'm so full of holes I'd be sure to sink!" —F. C. Fraser (Lieut. – Col., Ind. Med. Service), 309 Brownhill Road, Catford, S.E.6.

Season!

A cockney soldier, badly hit for the third time, was about to be carried once more on board the ambulance train at Folkestone. When the bearers came to his stretcher, one said to the other, "What's it say on his ticket?"

"Season!" said a voice from the stretcher. —Rev. A. T. Greenwood, Wallington, Surrey.

Where's the Milk and Honey?

A medical Officer of a London division in Palestine was explaining to a dying Cockney in his field ambulance at Bethlehem how sorry he was that he had no special comforts to ease his last moments, when the man, with a cheery grin, remarked: "Oh, that's all right, sir. Yer reads as 'ow this 'ere 'Oly Land is flowing with milk and 'oney; but I ain't seen any 'oney myself, and in our battery there's 15 men to a tin o' milk." —E. T. Middleton, 32 Denmark Road, West Ealing, W.13.

"Lunnon"

He was my sergeant-major. Having on one occasion missed death literally by inches, he said coolly: "Them blighters can't 'it 'arf as smart as my missus when she's roused." I last saw him at Charing Cross Station. We were both casualties. All the way from Dover he had moaned one word – "Lunnon." At Charing Cross they laid his stretcher beside mine. He was half conscious. Suddenly he revived and called out, his voice boyish and jolly: "Good 'ole Charin' Crawss," and fell back dead. —G. W. R., Norwich, Norfolk.

Sparing the M.O

It was during some open warfare in France. The scene a small room full of badly wounded men; all the remainder have been hurriedly removed, or rather, not brought in here. There are no beds; the men lie on the floor close together.

I rise to stretch my back after dressing one. My foot strikes another foot. A yell of agony – the foot was attached to a badly shattered thigh.

An insistent, earnest chorus: "You didn't 'urt him, sir. 'E often makes a noise like that."

I feel a hand take mine, and, looking down, I see it in the grasp of a man with three gaping wounds. "It wasn't your fault, sir," he says, in a fierce, hoarse whisper.

And then I realise that not a soul in that room but takes it for granted that my mental anguish for my stupidity is greater than his own physical pain, and is doing his best to deaden it for me – one, at any rate, at great cost to himself.

In whose ranks are the world's great gentlemen? —"The Clumsy Fool," Guy's Hospital, E.C.

"Robbery with Violence"

A Cockney soldier had his leg shattered. When he came round in hospital the doctors told him they had been obliged to take his leg off.

"Taken my leg off? Blimey! Where is it? Hi, wot yer done wiv it? Fer 'Eaven's sake, find my leg, somebody; it's got seven and a tanner in the stocking." —S. W. Baker, 23 Trinity Road, Bedford.

Seven His Lucky Number

Scene: the plank road outside St. Jean. Stretcher-bearers bringing down a man whose left leg had been blown away below the knee. A man coming up recognises the man on the stretcher, and the following conversation ensues:

"Hello, Bill!" Then, catching sight of the left leg: "Blimey! You ain't 'arf copped it."

The Reply: A faint smile, a right hand feebly pointing to the left sleeve already bearing six gold stripes, and a hoarse voice which said, "Anuvver one, and seven's me lucky number." —S. G. Wallis Norton, Norton House, Peaks Hill, Purley.

Blind Man's Buff

The hospital ship Dunluce Castle, on which I was serving, was taking the wounded and sick from Gallipoli. Among the wounded brought on board one evening was a man who was badly hurt about his face. Our M.O. thought the poor chap's eyes were sightless.

Imagine our surprise when, in the morning, finding that his eyes were bandaged, he pulled himself to a sitting posture in bed, turned his head round and cried out, "S'y, boys, who's fer a gime of blind man's buff?"

I am glad to say that the sight of one eye was saved. —F. T. Barley, 24, Station Avenue, Prittlewell, Southend.