With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train by Ernest N. Bennett
page 67 of 75 (89%)
page 67 of 75 (89%)
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envoys returned with armfuls of material. The outside of the train and
the surface of the table were gaily decorated, and two photographs of her Majesty which we had cut out of magazines were framed in leaves and flowers and bits of coloured paper, the very best we could do! We had secured an order for some beer and a couple of bottles of whisky, and when these adjuncts had been duly fetched from the canteen we sat down to our Christmas dinner. Towards the end of it our kind and deservedly popular C.O. Captain Fleming, R.A.M.C., paid us a visit, with a civilian doctor and the two nurses. The Captain made us a little speech and informed us that the Queen had sent her best Christmas wishes to the troops. We then cheered her Majesty, and Captain Fleming and Dr. Waters and the nurses, and our visitors left us to enjoy the rest of the evening as we liked. After various toasts--the Queen, our General, Absent Friends and so on--several comrades from other corps dropped in and every one was called upon for a song. It is curious to find the extraordinary popularity amongst soldiers of lugubrious and doleful songs. The majority of our songs at that Christmas dinner dealt with graves and the flowers that grew upon them, on the death of soldiers and the grief of parents. One song, I remember, was almost ludicrously sad. It told how a young soldier on active service in the Sudan or some other distant region hears, apparently by telepathic means, that his mother--the conventional grey-haired mother--is in some distress. The soldier at once, without any attempt to secure leave of absence, sets out for "home" on foot. He is brought back, and, as the excuse about his mother is very naturally discredited, the deserter is sentenced to be shot. Just as his lifeless body falls back riddled with bullets the mother arrives--how, it is not explained--so, as the refrain has it, "The Pardon comes too late". There were also several pauses in the |
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