Carleton Case - Funny Stories Told by the Soldiers

“Dat’s what I call inventin’,” exclaimed his colored listener. “But how about dem comin’-back bullets? What do dey do to keep ’em from hittin’ ouah men when dey come back?”

“Well, Mr. Edison made ’em so he’s got ’em trained. You don’t s’pose he’d let ’em kill any Americans, do you? No, sah. He’s got ’em fixet so’s dey jes’ ease back down aroun’ de gunner’s feet an’ sort o’ say: ‘Dey’s all dead in dat trench, boss. Send me to a live place where I’se got a chancet to do somethin’.’”

A soldier was brought up for stealing his trench bunkie’s liquor.

“I’m sorry, sor,” he said. “But I put the liquor for the two of us in the same bottle. Mine was at the bottom, an’ I was obliged to drink his to get mine.”

At a church adjacent to a big military camp a service was recently held for soldiers only.

“Let all you brave fellows who have troubles stand up,” shouted the preacher.

Instantly every man rose except one.

“Ah!” exclaimed the preacher, peering at this lone individual. “You are one in a thousand.”

“It ain’t that,” piped back the only man who had remained seated, as the rest of his comrades gazed suspiciously at him. “Somebody’s put some cobbler’s wax on the seat, and I’m stuck.”

An army chaplain was trudging along a hot, dusty road with a company of soldiers. As they stopped to rest and to get a drink of water at a farm house the farmer’s wife said to the chaplain:

“You go everywhere the soldiers go, I suppose?”

“No, ma’am,” answered the preacher, “not everywhere; only in this world.”

The subject of rifle shooting often crops up at one of the training camps.

“I’ll bet anyone here a box of cigars,” said Lieut. A., “that I can fire twenty-one shots at 200 yards and tell without waiting for the marker the result of each one correctly.”

“Done!” cried Maj. B. And the whole mess turned out early the next morning to witness the experiment.

The lieutenant fired.

“Miss!” he announced calmly.

Another shot.

“Miss!” he repeated.

A third shot.

“Miss!”

“Here, hold on!” put in Maj. B. “What are you trying to do? You’re not firing for the target!”

“Of course not!” was the cool response. “I’m firing for those cigars!”

Two “kilties” from the same town met in a rest camp “somewhere in France” and started exchanging confidences.

“Whit like a sendoff did yer wuman gie ye, Sandy, when ye left for France?” asked Jock presently.

Sandy lit a fresh cigaret before he replied frankly:

“Says she, ‘Noo, there’s yer train, Sandy; in ye get, an’ see an’ do yer duty. By jingo, ma mannie, if I thocht ye wed shirk it oot yonder I wud see ye was wounded afore ye gang off.’ That’s the sendoff she gaed me, Jock.”

United States Senator Howard Sutherland, of West Virginia, tells a story about a mountain youth who visited a recruiting office in the Senator’s State for the purpose of enlisting in the regular army. The examining physician found the young man as sound as a dollar, but that he had flat feet.

“I’m sorry,” said the physician, “but I’ll have to turn you down. You’ve got flat feet.”

The mountaineer looked sorrowful. “No way for me to git in it, then?” he inquired.

“I guess not. With those flat feet of yours you wouldn’t be able to march even five miles.”

The youth from the mountains studied a moment. Finally he said: “I’ll tell you why I hate this so darned bad. You see, I walked nigh on to one hundred and fifty miles over the mountains to git here, and gosh, how I hate to walk back!”

Two men went to the Y. M. C. A. director in one of the camps and said that they were in the habit of kneeling down and saying their prayers at home. What ought they to do here?

“Try it out,” was the advice.

They did; the second night two others in the barracks joined them; the third night a few more; gradually the number increased until considerably more than half the men resumed the habit of childhood and knelt by their cots in prayer before turning in.

A company captain in one of the cantonments the first evening his men stood at attention for retreat said: “Men, this is a serious business we are engaged in; it is fitting that we should pray about it.” There and then this Plattsburg Reserve officer made a simple and earnest prayer for the divine blessing upon their lives and their work. The impression upon the men was described as tremendous. Such incidents indicate the general spirit of the new armies.

They are telling the story in London taprooms of a German soldier who laughed uproariously all the time he was being flogged. When the officer, at the end, inquired the cause of the private’s mirth, the latter broke into a fresh fit of laughter and cried:

“Why, I’m the wrong man!”

A French soldier who came proudly up to an American in a certain headquarters town the other day asked:

“You spik French?”

“Nope,” answered the American, “not yet.”

The Frenchman smiled complacently.

“Aye spik Eengleesh,” he said. The American grinned and the Frenchman looked about for some means to show his prowess in the foreign tongue. At that moment a French girl, very neat and trim in her peaked hat, long coat, and high laced boots, came along. The Frenchman jerked his head toward her, looked knowingly at the American, and said triumphantly: “Chicken.”

The American roared.

“Shake,” he said, extending his hand. “You don’t speak English; you speak American.”

The grit of the British Tommy is amazing, as told by a Swiss correspondent who found himself with fourteen soldiers in a barn. A huge German shell suddenly “found” the barn in the very center and wrecked it. It was pitch dark; the Swiss was seriously wounded and decided to lay still until help should come. Suddenly a voice spoke out of the dark:

“Anyone left here?”

“Right here, old chap,” came an answer.

“Ah.” Then silence, and in a few moments came: “Say, old man, think you could give me a bit of a lift. Seems both of my pins are gone.”

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