You do get the red, living phrases, don’t you, Private Atkins? “The hottest thing in South Africa was frost-bitten compared with what’s going on here.” “The Boer War was a mothers’ meeting beside this affair.” “Another shell dropped at me and I went like Tod Sloan.” “Did you see that German man’s face when I told him about our victories? Poor devil! He opened his mouth like a letter-box.” No, Thomas, you may not be a scribe, but you “get there,” especially when the order comes, “All rifles loaded and handy by your side!”
“It’s hard, but it’s good,” is how you sum up your campaigning, and there goes a bottom truth. “You can’t,” as you say, “expect a six-course dinner on active service,” but you would break your heart to be out of it all. “When I am in the thick of the fire a strange feeling comes over me. I feel and see no danger--I think it is the fighting blood of my forefathers.” Yes, and when you receive a rifle bullet through the arm or leg it feels “a bit of a sting,” nothing more, “like a sharp needle going into me, but shrapnel hurts--hurts pretty badly.” You are not, however, going to let mother, wife, or sweetheart know this, because it would worry them.
You dread to tell them that “when the bullet went in my leg the main artery was severed, and they are going to take part of it off and leave me a cripple for life.” Still harder is it to write: “I am wounded, and do not hope to live; I am going and so cannot come home as I hoped; I send all my love.” And then there is an echo of infinity and immortality in the thought, “When a fellow gets shot you never think he is gone, but that he will come back.” Someone softly starts singing “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and it runs sweetly along the ranks, the muffled prayer of inextinguishable hearts for a soul in flight.
But “Black Marias” and “Jack Johnsons” and “coal-boxes,” as you call the enemy’s howitzer shells, are driving along, and you accept them with your usual Atkins philosophy. The gun you know as “Aunt Sally” is flopping her big shells at you; “Calamity Jane” salutes you in odd volumes from miles away, and “Belching Billy” chimes in now and then. “Whistling Rufus,” whose shells are smaller, is also in the turmoil, but, being without fear of the big brethren, you merely have a contempt for him. Still, the whole roar keeps you from the hour’s sleep you are entitled to snatch, and therefore you gently swear at the Kaiser as “William the Weed,” nickname Von Kluck “Old Von o’Clock,” and grimly subscribe to the Uhlans as “Ewe-lambs.” Always you remain the good sportsman, saying, “Put me a shilling on Gravelotte for the Cesarewitch, if this letter is in time”; or, “Fancy Robins drawing the Palace 1--1. Cheers!”