The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (43 page)

CB
: confinement to barracks, a military punishment.

C-in-C
: Commander-in-Chief.

CO
: Commanding Officer.

CSM
: Company Sergeant Major.

Corps HQ
: Corps Headquarters.

DCM
: Distinguished Conduct Medal; a military decoration for noncommissioned officers established in 1854.

DSO
: Distinguished Service Order; a military decoration for officers created in 1886. The DSO was awarded nearly nine thousand times during the First World War.

GHQ
: General Headquarters.

NCO
: Non-commissioned Officer. In the British army of the First World War, NCOs were members of the so-called enlisted personnel. They took over administrative or supervisory tasks delegated to them by a commissioned officer.

OC
:Officer Commanding – that is, the Company Commander.

OTC
:Officer Training Corps.

QM
: Quartermaster.

RSM
: Regimental Sergeant Major; a warrant officer obliged to maintain discipline and ensure high standards of performance in his regiment or battalion.

VC
: Victoria Cross; a military decoration awarded to members of the Commonwealth armed services. It was created in 1856 by Queen Victoria to acknowledge conspicuous acts of bravery.

First appeared in the
Evening News
on 29 September 1914. It sparked the legend about the ‘Angels of Mons', who were subsequently claimed in other sources to have appeared during the British retreat from the town. Machen was at first willing to exploit the story's popularity commercially and republished ‘The Bowmen' in a short collection of war tales under the title
The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
(1915), but he was bewildered when the ‘incident' in his story was taken as fact by many, particularly the Church. He tried to expose it as fiction in his introduction to the volume.

1
.
the retreat of the eighty thousand
: the British retreat at Mons in 1914.

2
.
Sedan
: a decisive victory over the French during the Franco-Prussian war, on 1 September 1870, by the German army under General Helmuth von Moltke (1800–91). French forces were vastly outnumbered.

3
.
‘Good-bye, good-bye to Tipperary'
: In the autumn of 1914, ‘It's a Long Way to Tipperary' (1912) was a popular song among English soldiers and civilians.

4
.
What price Sidney Street?
: Sidney Street, in Stepney, east London, was the scene of a showdown between the Metropolitan Police and a group of Eastern European anarchists in January 1911. Cornered after a failed robbery and the shooting of several policemen, two anarchists set fire to the building in which they were hiding and died during their attempt to escape. ‘The Siege of Sidney Street' or ‘the Battle of Stepney' was widely reported and even depicted on postcards.

5
.
Worldwithout end. Amen
:final words of the ‘Song of Mary' (Luke 1:46–55), sung as the Magnificat during Anglican evensong.

6
.
Harow
: an Anglo-Norman battle cry.

7
.
the contemptible English
: reference to a remark attributed to the Kaiser – but probably invented by the War Office – to the effect that the English were ‘a contemptible little army'. The name ‘Old Contemptibles' was subsequently adopted as a term for the soldiers of the BEF.

Like most of McNeile's war stories, ‘Private Meyrick – Company Idiot' was first published in the
Daily Mail
during the war, and later appeared in his collection
Men, Women and Guns
(1916).

1
.
Expeditionary Force
: the BEF.

2
.
a contemptible little army
: see ‘The Bowmen', note 7.

3
.
Kipling
: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936, see Biographies, p. 395).

4
.
Pay Corporal
: a non-commissioned officer who, in addition to his usual duties, was in charge of a regiment's payroll and connected administration.

5
.
Musketry returns
: the records of the most recent shooting practice.

6
.
A Company
: military unit, typically 190 to 200 soldiers; see also ‘Victory', note 1.

7
.
Savez
: ‘Understand?'

8
.
through the charge that won the day
: the Charge of the Light Brigade – the British cavalry against Russian forces during the Crimean war in 1854, commemorated in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade' (1855) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892). The small British force attacked on a misinterpreted order and suffered heavy casualties.

9
.
If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white
: from Rudyard Kipling's (1865–1936) ‘The Young British Soldier', published in Kipling's
Barrack-Room Ballads
(1892), which, by 1915, was in its forty-second edition.

First appeared in Montague's collection of war stories
Fiery Particles
(1923). On 28 April 1923,
Time
magazine judged the volume as ‘not so important' as Montague's war recollections in
Disenchantment
(1922), but praised the author's ‘humour, irony, [and] sympathy'.

1
.
Proserpine's garden
: Proserpine, the Roman goddess of the underworld, was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of fertility. Dividing her time between her husband, Hades, and her mother, Proserpine spends four months of the year in the underworld and the remaining eight above ground with her mother. Her return to the upper world was believed to herald spring.

2
.
Mais assez gentil
: ‘but pleasant enough'.

3
.
Le bon Dieu Boche
: ‘the good German God'.

4
.
ne faut pas les embêter
: ‘you don't need to annoy them'.

5
.
Paisiblement
: ‘peacefully'.

6
.
dixie-lid
: the lid of a cooling pot.

7
.
Pas d'inquiêtude
: ‘no trouble'.

First appeared in the author's
Roads to Glory
(1930), and was published a year after his war novel
Death of a Hero
(1929).

1
.
C Company
: military unit, typically 190 to 200 soldiers. The British army identifies its rifle companies by letter (usually, but not always, A, B and C).

2
.
the Dormouse in Alice
: a character in
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(1865), by Lewis Carroll (1832–98).

3
.
bally
: euphemism meaning ‘bloody'.

4
.
zero hour
: the co-ordinated moment of attack when the soldiers had to go over the top.

5
.
Siegfried Line
: a defensive line of trenches and five forts, established in 1916–17 by the German army as a section of the Hindenburg Line in northern France, and named after characters from the medieval German epic
Nibelungenlied
.

6
.
Rosinante
: Don Quixote's horse.

7
.
maffick
: from ‘mafeking', to describe riotous celebrating, such as took place after the relief of Mafeking on 17 May 1900.

In 2000 ‘Heroes' won an Edgar Award, the Mystery Writers of America award for the best short story. It was first published in an anthology of mystery stories,
Murder and Obsession
(2000), edited by Otto Penzler.

1
.
God's an Englishman
: popular nineteenth-century maxim of obscure origin, further popularized by R. F. Delderfield's
God Is An Englishman
(1970).

First appeared in its author's
The Forbidden Zone
(1929), a collection of sketches and stories based on her experiences as a nurse on the Western Front.

1
.
Casse-croû te
: a snack.

2
.
Briquet
: cigarette-lighter.

Published posthumously in
Something Childish and other Stories
(1924). Katherine Mansfield based the story on her affair with a ‘little corporal', the French officer and writer Francis Carco (1886–1958).

1
.
ma mignonne
: ‘sweetheart'.

2
.
mignonette
: a plant with fragrant green-grey flowers.

3
.
ma France adorêe
: ‘my beloved France'.

4
.
kepi
: uniform cap worn by French soldiers.

5
.
vous ˆtes tout à fait aimable
: ‘You're very kind'.

6
.
toute de suite
: ‘Now; immediately'.

7
.
juste en face de la gare
: ‘directly opposite the railway station'.

8
.
Venez vite, vite
: ‘Come quickly!'

9
.
un espècedesea-gullcouchê survotrechapeau
: ‘a kind of sea-gull perched on your hat'.

10
.
Non, je ne peux pas manger ça
: ‘No, I can't eat that'.

11
.
Matin
:
Le Matin
(1883–1944) was a French newspaper, with a print run of 670,000 in 1914.

12
.
Montez vite, vite!
: ‘Get in quickly!'.

13
.
Ah, je m'en f…
: polite abbreviation for ‘
Je m'en fou
', meaning ‘I couldn't care less!'

14
.
Prends ça, mon vieux
: ‘Take this, old friend'.

15
.
Dodo, mon homme, fais vit' dodo
: a lullaby French baby-talk, meaning ‘to fall asleep'.

16
.
Premier Rencontre
: ‘First Meeting'.

17
.
Triomphe D'Amour
: ‘The Triumph of Love'.

18
.
Il pleure de colère
: ‘He's crying with rage'.

19
.
Picon
: an alcoholic drink.

20
.
Mais vous savez c'est un peu dêgouˆ tant, ça
: ‘This is rather disgusting, you know.'

21
.
N'est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?
: ‘Isn't that so, Miss?'

22
.
bifteks
: beefsteaks.

23
.
souvenir tendre
: ‘a fond memory'.

24
.
êpatant
: ‘jolly good; terrific'.

First published in the
Strand Magazine
in October 1917. The text reprinted here has been taken from
The Complete Short Fiction of Joseph Conrad
, vol. 2 (1992).

First published in
The English Review
in November 1924, and subsequently included in
The Best Short Stories of 1925
, edited by Edward J. O'Brien.

1
. ‘
Chanson Triste
': a short piece for the piano by Peter Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), Opus 40 No. 2.

2
.
a common Bulgar soldier
: Bulgaria had fought Romania in the Second Balkans War of 1913, and while Serbia, Greece, Romania and Montenegro joined the Allies, Bulgaria fought alongside Germany in the First World War. Britain and France declared war on Bulgaria in October 1914.

3
.
Dorrain
: a town on the border between Macedonia and Bulgaria.

4
.
Rupert Brooke
: English poet (1887–1915), made famous by his
War Sonnets
(1915) and ‘The Soldier' in particular. He died of blood poisoning on a hospital ship in the Mediterranean. Brooke became a tragic symbol of Edwardian youth destroyed by the war.

5
.
and I shall find some girl, perhaps
: the final lines of Brooke's ‘The Chilterns' (1916).

6
.
Omar Khayyám
: twelfth-century Persian poet. He became famous in Victorian England when his
Rubáiyát
was translated by Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883).

7
.
Johnny
: soldiers' slang for enemy soldier.

First published in the September 1917 issue of
Strand Magazine
, subtitled ‘The War Service of Sherlock Holmes'. It also appeared in
Collier's
on 22 September 1917 and in a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, entitled
His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes
(1917).

1
.
the Kaiser
: William II (1859–1941), the last German emperor and a grandson of Queen Victoria.

2
.
our good Chancellor
: Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856– 1921), in office since 14 July 1909. Even before the outbreak of war, Bethmann Hollweg doubted that Germany would win. He opposed unrestricted submarine warfare and was dismissed on 13 July 1917 under pressure from generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

3
.
four-in-hand
: carriage drawn by four horses.

4
.
window-breaking furies
: the suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. The WSPU was founded in 1903, and from 1905 embraced acts of violence such as window-breaking or even arson to draw attention to their claim for women's suffrage.