: 500 of the Best Cockney War Stories by Various Hamilton Ian Contributor Thomas Bert Illustrator - World War 1914-1918 Personal narratives British; World War 1914-1918 Anecdotes

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"Wot yer grumblin' at?" broke in the corporal, "you with yer fawncy tyles of Inja? At any rate, there ain't no blinking moskeeters 'ere nor 'orrible malyria."

There was a break in the pleasantries as a big one came over. In the subsequent explosion the little Cockney was fatally wounded.

A "Bow Bells" Heroine

For seven hours, with little intermission, the German airmen bombed a camp not a hundred miles from Etaples. Of the handful of Q.M.A.A.C.s stationed there, one was an eighteen-year-old middle-class girl, high-strung, sensitive, not long finished with her convent school. Another was Kitty, a Cockney girl of twenty, by occupation a machine-hand, by vocation a com?dienne, and, by heaven, a heroine.

The high courage of the younger girl was cracking under the strain of that ordeal by bombs. Kitty saw how it was with her, and for five long hours she gave a recital of song, dialogue, and dance--most of it improvised--while the bombs fell and the anti-aircraft guns screamed. In all probability she saved the younger girl's reason.

Samson, but Shorn

During the German attack near Zillebeke in June 1916 a diminutive Cockney, named Samson, oddly enough, received a scalp wound from a shell splinter which furrowed a neat path through his hair.

The fighting was rather hot at the time, and this great-hearted little Londoner carried on with the good work.

Some hours later came the order to fall back, and as the Cockney was making his way down the remains of a trench, dazed and staggering, a harassed sergeant, himself nearly "all in," ordered him to bear off a couple of rifles and a box of ammunition.

When we were at Railway Wood, Ypres Salient, in 1916, "Muddy Lane," our only communication trench from the front line to the support line, had been reduced to shapelessness by innumerable "heavies." Progress in either direction entailed exposure to snipers in at least twelve different places, and runners and messengers were, as our sergeant put it, "tickled all the way."

In the support line one afternoon, hearing the familiar "Crack! Crack! Crack!" I went to Muddy Lane junction to await the advertised visitor. He arrived--a wiry little Cockney Tommy, with his tin hat dented in two places and blood trickling from a bullet graze on the cheek.

In appreciation of the risk he had run I remarked, "Jerry seems to be watching that bit!"

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