Tommy Atkins at War: As Told in His Own Letters

n one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valor of my soldiers to

exuberant spirits, and singing as he went, "It's a long way to Tipperary." In his pocket was the message from Lord Kitchener which Atkins believes to

ontinent, while the boasted German fleet, impotent to menace the safety of our transports, lay he

en applied to the creation of a small but highly efficient striking force ready for instant action. And now the time for action had come. The force was ready. From th

ings, no stirring pictures of troopships passing out into the night. All was silence, the silence of a nation preparing for the "iron sacrifice," as Kipling calls it, of a devastating war. Then suddenly the silenc

elt the absence of the stimulating send-off, necessitated by official caution and the exigencies of a European war, he at least had the new joy of a welcome on foreign soil. It is difficult to find words wi

egiment after regiment landed, the population went into ecstasies of delight. Through the narrow streets of the old town the soldiers marched, singing, whistling, and cheering, with a wave of their caps to the women and a kiss wafted to the children (but not only to th

arion notes of the "Marseillaise," but, strangest of all to French ears, to listen to that new battle-cry, "Are we down-hearted?" followed

LONG WAY TO

ndon came an Ir

paved with gold, su

ccadilly, Strand an

ited, then he shou

OR

ng way to

long wa

ng way to

eetest gi

y Picc

Leicest

, long way

art's rig

a'

letter to his

not receive it, wr

s in spelling, Mo

en that's bad, don't

ho

neat reply to

aloney wants to

nd Piccadilly, or

drove me silly-hop

ho

at he calls "the stuff." He doesn't get it even from Kipling; Thomas Hardy's "Song of the Soldiers" leaves him cold. He wants no epic stanzas, no heroic periods. What he asks for is something simp

eat European battlefields, and has echoed along the whi

one long fête: it was "roses, roses, all the way." In a letter

flower gardens, and the cars look like carnival carriages. They pelt us with fruit, cigarettes, chocolate, bread-anything and everything. It is simply impossible to convey an impression of it all. Yesterday my own car had to stop in a town for petrol. In a moment there must have been a couple of hundred people round clamoring; autograph albums were thrust in front of me; a perfect

! The worst of it was we could not understand their talking. When we crossed the Franco-Belgian frontier, there was a vast crowd of Belgians waiting for us. Our first greeting was the big Union Jack, and on the other side was a huge canvas with the words 'Welcome to our British Comrades.' The Belgians would have given

strategic retreat had begun. No praise could be too high for the chivalry and humanity of

says one writer; "you simply can't hold back your tears." Others disclose our sympathetic soldier-men sharing their rations with the starving fugitives and carrying the children on their shoulders so that the weary mothers may not fall

er to reach the fighting line. These men have fought valiantly, desperately, since then, but their spirits are as high as ever, and the