Send us the rank and file.
Send us the grand old Territorials--they'll face the danger with a smile.
Where are the boys of the Old Brigade who made old England free?
You may send my mother, my sister or my brother,
But for Gawd's sake don't send me."
They leave off whistling and humming to shout the last line. A shell
falls near them--then another, then another. They crouch for a minute
against the sticky walls to escape the flying spray of death. Then
they plod onward again through the mud whistling and humming, "But for
Gawd's sake don't send me." They're probably a carrying party, taking
up the rations to their pals. It's quite likely they'll have a bad
time to-night--there's the smell of gas in the air. Good luck to
them. They disappear round the next traverse.
Our men sing many mad burlesques on their own splendour--parodies on
their daily fineness. Here's a last example--a take-off on _"A Little
Bit of Heaven_:"
"Oh a little bit of shrapnel fell from out the sky one day
And it landed on a soldier in a field not far away;
But when they went to find him he was bust beyond repair,
So they pulled his legs and arms off and they left him lying there.
Then they buried him in Flanders just to make the new crops grow.
He'll make the best manure, they say, and sure they ought to know.
And they put a little cross up which bore his name so grand,
On the day he took his farewell for a better Promised Land."
One learns to laugh--one has to--just as he has to learn to believe in
immortality.
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