Carleton Case - Funny Stories Told by the Soldiers

“‘Where are yer, Bill?’ asked one.

“I’m ’ere,’ says Bill.

“‘Where’s ’ere?’ says his pal.

“‘Ow the blinkin’ ’ell do I know where ’ere is?’ says Bill.

“Just then Fritz put one alongside of my hut and snuffed out all the candles, but thanks to the good old soft mud – and how we have cussed that mud! – I am writing to you, Old Top, tonight. I expect to be on the hike again in a day or so, I know not where and I do not care. All places look alike to this old kid. They can set me down in a field of mud and inside of forty-eight hours I have got a home fit for a prince, or a ground-hog – sometimes I am living several feet under ground and other times I am living in a tent, a hut, a stable, barn, shed, and, when in luck, in some deserted chateau.”

Jarvis, lying on his back looking up at a twinkling star through a hole in the roof seems to have started a train of verse in his brain, for he writes:

“I got to cogitating about a lot of things, and for the first time in my life I found rimes running through what I am pleased to call my mind. So, I lighted my dip and jotted down the enclosed doggerel. They say it is a bad sign when a man starts to write poetry, but I don’t for a moment think anyone would call this by that name or that I shall even be acclaimed a Back yard Kipling. Besides, as I flourish under the sobriquet ‘Bully Beef,’ owing to my major-general proportions, I am certainly no Longfellow. But here it is, such as it is:

The sergeant halted the new sentry opposite the man he was to relieve.

“Give over your orders,” he said.

The old sentry reeled off the routine instructions with confidence, but one of the special orders baffled him.

“Come on, man!” said the sergeant impatiently.

“On no account,” stammered the sentry, “are you to let any questionable character pass the lines, except the colonel’s wife.”

Recently, during the operations of the British Egyptian expeditionary force in Palestine, a town to the south of Beersheba was captured, and in it was discovered a splendid example of mosaic pavement.

The excavation of it was placed in charge of a chaplain, and while the work was proceeding some human bones were discovered.

Elated at the find, the padre immediately wired to great headquarters, saying:

“Have found the bones of saint.”

Shortly after the reply came back:

“Unable to trace Saint in casualty list. Obtain particulars of regimental number and regiment from his identity disk.”

Before introducing Lieutenant de Tassan, aid to General Joffre, and Colonel Fabry, the “Blue Devil of France,” Chairman Spencer, of the St. Louis entertainment committee, at the M. A. A. breakfast told this anecdote:

“In Washington Lieutenant de Tassan was approached by a pretty American girl, who said:

“‘And did you kill a German soldier?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied.

“‘With what hand did you do it?’ she inquired.

“‘With this right hand,’ he said.

“And then the pretty American girl seized his right hand and kissed it. Colonel Fabry stood near by. He strode over and said to Lieutenant de Tassan:

“‘Heavens, man, why didn’t you tell the young lady you bit him to death?’”

The commandant of one of the great French army supply depots was busy one morning. He was a man of forty; a colonel in the regular French army. He was talking to an American colonel when an erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and mustache and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve came up, saluted, delivered a message and then asked:

“Are there any more orders, sir?”

When he was told that there were none he brought his heels together with a click, saluted again and went away.

The commandant turned to the American with a peculiar smile on his face and asked:

“Do you know who that man is?”

“No,” was the reply.

“That is my father,” was the answer.

The father was then exactly seventy-two years old. He was a retired business man when the war broke out. After two years of the heroic struggle he decided that he couldn’t keep out of it. He was too old to fight, but after long insistence he secured a commission. By one of the many curious coincidences of war he was assigned to serve under his son.

The following is posted on the door of a deserted cabin in Coos County, Oregon:

“To whom it may concern:

We should like to print this story in letters of gold, says the London Tit-Bits. It is of a colonel on the British front who wanted twenty men to face almost certain death.

He called the whole company together and made the situation clear to them. Then he asked for twenty volunteers to advance one pace. He loved his men, and it was almost more than he could bear. He closed his eyes to keep back his tears, and when he opened them the men stood in exactly the same formation. He was pained.

“Is there not one volunteer?” he asked.

A sergeant stepped forward at salute. “Every one has advanced one pace, sir,” he said.

The young subaltern, who was a son of a general and never omitted to rub in that fact, was taking a message from the general to the gunners.

“If you please,” he said to the major, “father says will you move your guns.” The major was in an irate mood. “Oh!” he rejoined, “and what the blazes does your mother say?”

Kerensky kissed Arthur Henderson, the British labor politician, as the American Labor Mission calls him, and all England gasped. Kerensky is coming to this country. He may want to kiss Secretary Wilson or even President Wilson. This has led an anonymous poet to suggest that the President put his greetings into a song, and to furnish him with the song, as follows: