Humor and Heroism
Glimpses of the Sunnier Side of the Men Who Played With Death
After relating many pitiful, tear-compelling incidents of wounded and dying soldiers in trench and in the temporary hospitals back of the front, an English Chaplain turned from the saddening episodes to some of the humorous phases of his experience among the men—humorous by contrast, that is, for some of the touches are more than prods to laughter; this for example:
“Once, in a hospital train, where a crowd of helpless men were being loaded in at a siding, I saw one man, groaning in agony from rheumatism, carried in. ‘Where are you wounded, old chap?’ asked the orderly. ‘Hoots!’ he replied, ‘I’m na wounded at a’; fling me onywhere, an’ luk after the rest.’” The Chaplain continues:
“There are countless streaks of humor and gleams of laughter even amid the sorrow-clouds of war. The mysterious diseases from which the soldier thinks he suffers sometimes puzzle you. He will proudly, and with a majestic solemnity, tell you that his illness has developed into ‘gasteria’—perhaps a more accurately descriptive name than science recognizes. More than one is sorry for his wife, who is distracted and harrowed by the ’insinuendoes’ of her neighbors, a word almost worthy of a place in the dictionary. And many will tell you of chums who have broken down, and who were not really fit to serve, having been always of a ’historical’ tendency. One almost feels a plea for heredity there.
“How grateful we were when we found occasions like these! For, though we were not downhearted, we were often war-weary. And frequently the good cheer of those whom we were there to comfort and strengthen really strengthened and comforted us.