500 OF THE BEST COCKNEY WAR STORIES
REPRINTED FROM THE LONDON
Evening News
AND ILLUSTRATED BY
BERT THOMAS
WITH AN OPENING YARN BY
GENERAL
SIR IAN HAMILTON
G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.S.O., etc.
Vice-President of the British Legion
President of the Metropolitan Area of the
British Legion
ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS LTD.
LONDON, E.C.4
EDITOR'S FOREWORD
In the remembering, and in the retelling, of those wardays when laughter sometimes saved men's reason,Cockneys the world over have left to posterity a record ofnoble and imperishable achievement.
From the countless tales collected by the London EveningNews these five hundred, many of them illustrated by thegreat war-time artist, Bert Thomas, have been chosen as afitting climax and perpetuation.
Sir Ian Hamilton's story of another war shows that, howevermuch methods of fighting may vary from generation togeneration, there is no break in continuity of a greattradition, that the spirits of laughter and high adventure areimmortal in the make-up of the British soldier.
Sir Ian's story is doubly fitting. As President of theMetropolitan Area of the British Legion he is intimatelyconcerned with the after-war welfare of just that TommyAtkins who is immortalised in these pages. In the secondplace, all profits from the sale of this book will be devotedto the cause which the Higher Command in every branch ofthe Services is fostering—the British Legion.
CONTENTS
SIR IAN HAMILTON'S STORY
The Great War was a matrix wherein many anecdotes have sprouted.They are short-lived plants—fragile as mushrooms—none too easyto extricate either, embedded as they are in the mass.
To dig out the character of a General even from the plans of his GeneralStaff is difficult; how much more difficult to dig out t