Tommy Atkins

“ The manifest superiority of Tommy Atkins as a fighter stands out in bold relief against the gentle populations of India, who regard him as the very incarnation of war and warlike attributes. His own confidence in his ability to whip all the multitudinous enemies of England put together, is as great to-day as it ever was, and nothing would suit him better than a campaign against the military colossus of the North in defence of the British interests in India he now so faithfully guards. ”

“ From the park the light of the tent fires sent out flames that illumined the roadway, the swaying and rustling of the heavy trees made whispering sounds. Once at a turning he heard a boy's voice in the camp ringing out high above the moaning of the trees:
"Oh, Tommy, Tommy Atkins, you're a good 'un, 'eart and 'and,
You're a credit to your country and to all your native land." ”

“ Tommy Atkins looked like a beast. His clothing was a hardened-mud casing; his body was the color of the sticky Flanders clay in which he lived; but his soul was clean and fine. I saw him rescuing wounded comrades, tending them in the trenches, encouraging them and heartening them when he himself was discouraged and sick at heart.
"You're a-go'n' 'ome, 'Arry! Blimy! think o' that! Back to old Blightey w'ile the rest of us 'as got to stick it out 'ere! ”

“ In a war hospital that harbours many thousands of patients per annum, we should know, in the long run, something about the characteristics of Tommy Atkins; and it is with resent [Pg 108] ment that I hear him thus classified as a mere type. He is not a type. Discipline and training have given him some veneer of generalised similarities. Beneath these, Tommy Atkins is simply the man in the street—any man in any street ”

“ Amid men so full of such animal life as our brave lads, it will be readily imagined that existence is not wholly composed of shadow; indeed, few careers are so full of brightness and geniality as those of our fighting men. 'Tommy Atkins' is a unique creation. I know not from whence he springs. There is [90] something in his environment which evolves him, I suppose; it is not a question of years of association with men of his like, for the New Army which has only been in being for a few months produces precisely the same type ”

“ None of the men who are now known will find it. It is always the unknown man who makes that sort of discovery. He will come in time, and when he comes we shall wonder and admire, and say: ‘How new! How true!’ Why, in that very matter of Tommy Atkins, whose manifold portraits have done as much as anything to endear Kipling to the English people—it is known to many that in my own foolish youth I enlisted in the Army. I lived with Tommy. ”

“ To the average American who has not lived and fought with him, the Englishman appears to be distant, reserved, a slow thinker, and lacking in humor, but from my association with the man who inhabits the British Isles. I find that this opinion is unjust. To me, Tommy Atkins has proved himself to be the best of mates, a pal, and bubbling over with a fine sense of humor, a man with a just cause who is willing to sacrifice everything but honor in the advancement of the same. ”

“ Some fine day at the other end of the world some prancing pro-consul finds it necessary to smash one of the man-slaying machines that loom ominous on his borders, or some savage potentate makes an incursion into territory of a British colony, or some fierce outburst of Mahommedan fanaticism raises up a Mahdi in mid-Africa. In a moment Tommy Atkins is marched off to the troop-ship, and swept across the seas, heart-sick and sea-sick, and miserable exceedingly, to tight the Queen's enemies in foreign parts. ”

“ The explosion was terrible, and alas for any Tommy who misjudged the place of its fall! However, everyone had a chance. Trench-mortar projectiles are so large, and they describe so leisurely an arc before they fall, that men have time to run.
I've always admired Tommy Atkins for his sense of fair play. He loved giving Fritz "a little bit of all right," but he never resented it when Fritz had his own fun at our expense. I used to believe, in the far-off days of peace, that men had lost their old primal love for dangerous sport, their native ignorance of fear. ”

“ That is not specially Tommy Atkins; it is homo sapiens of the hearthside, whether in suburban villa or in slum, for ever dissatisfied (more especially with his victuals) and for ever evoking our affection all the same.
No; Tommy Atkins is never twice alike. He is unanimous on few debatable matters. One of them, as I have said, is the desir [Pg 115] ability of finishing the war—in the proper way. (But even here there are differences as to what constitutes the proper way.) Another is (I trust I shall not shock the reader) the extreme displeasingness of life at the front. ”

“ Tommy atkins.”
The class giggled and the teacher smiled, but her eyes were dim with tears.
“The English is faulty and the spelling poor; but the workmanship is good and your composition is certainly original.”
Tommy breathed again, and went soberly to his seat.
And when a committee of the teachers read the boys’ effusions, and compared Tommy’s originality, painstaking effort, and loving heart with sheets of commonplace statements,—such as, “An apple is good to eat,” “Apples grow on trees,” etc., etc.,— it was unanimously decided that Tommy Atkins should receive the prize. ”

“ They admit its mechanical perfection; it is the human factor that breaks down.
Nothing has impressed Tommy Atkins more than the lack of morale in the German soldiers. "Oh, they are brave enough, poor devils; but they've got no heart in the fighting," he says. That is absolutely true. Hundreds of thousands of them have no notion of what they are fighting for. Some of the prisoners declared that when they left the garrisons they were "simply told they were going to maneuvers"; "others," says a Royal Artilleryman, "had no idea they were fighting the English" ”

“ The private soldier has his conscience as well as the commissioned officer. In cases of industrial dispute Tommy Atkins would find in speeches made to-day by noble Lords and hon. Members justification for refusal to shoot down members of his own class with whose position he had conscientious sympathy.
J. H. Thomas, Organising Secretary of Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, put this in briefer phrasing when he said, "General Gough may feel keenly the Ulster situation. Tommy Atkins will feel not less keenly the industrial situation." ”

“ To compare the relative bravery of the American soldier and Tommy Atkins is very difficult; there is a difference, but it is undoubtedly due to the training and not to the actual courage of the men. There could be no better or braver soldier desired than the British when he knows what to do and when he is82 properly led; but the trouble is that he has not been taught to think for himself, and the majority of his officers do not take the trouble to think for him. The consequence has been that the Boers took more prisoners than they could feed. ”

“ They afforded a still stronger example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them.
“The heroine of them,” I said, “is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?”
“She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability,” answered MacShaughnassy.
“That was my opinion also,” I replied. “You can, therefore, imagine my feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat) , and a soldier’s arm round her waist. ”

“ One might write for days upon the incidents of this glorious day, into which the events of a stirring lifetime seem crowded. Our artillery got a good chance, and showed up magnificently. The dauntless bravery of English officers we seem to take for granted as (p. 048) a national heritage; but in something stronger than admiration—in positive love—my heart goes out to Tommy Atkins—sweating, swearing, grimy, dirty, fearless, and generous—Tommy is a bit of "all right."
Advance Of The Gordons At Elandslaagte. ”

“ It is apparent to every one that we have taken the I 'knock;' with most armies one would say beaten, but with Tommy Atkins you can't say that, as it would not be true, as the only way to defeat him is to kill him ”

“ Killing for a Shilling.—Lord Wolseley (who seems to have read the regulations governing communications from soldiers to the Press in a very liberal spirit) has published an article on the British Army in the pages of an American Twelvepenny Magazine. The contribution is embellished with sketches of the costumes of Tommy Atkins and his predecessors. ”

“ No matter, we shall be old campaigners when the winter is over; old mud-larkers, as impervious to wet earth as a worm. Even the mud is good training for the time we shall have in the trenches!
[15] TENT MUSIC
It is not often that Thomas Atkins of any nationality wears his heart upon his sleeve, and it is quite certain that the British Tommy but rarely does so, or his confrere of the Canadian Contingent. Perhaps he best shows his thoughts and relieves his feelings in song. ”

“ It will be a relief to turn from this sad record and give a sketch of Thomas Atkins upon the veldt as he appears to Christian workers. Nowhere else have we been able to see him apart from the fierce temptations which particularly assail him. Untrained, except in so far as military discipline is concerned, he is a child of nature, and nature not always of the best.
But the South African veldt has witnessed the remarkable spectacle of a sober army. No intoxicating drink was to be got, and the cup that cheers but not inebriates has been Tommy's only stimulant. ”

“ Geoffrey Young, the Daily News and Leader correspondent, "suffer from a curious aphasia, some get dazed and speechless, some deafened"; but of course their recovery is fairly rapid, and the German "Black Marias" soon exhaust their terrors. A man may lose his memory and have but a hazy idea of the day of the week or the hour of the day, but Tommy still keeps his nerve, and after his first experience of the enemy's fire, to quote his own words, "doesn't care one d—— about the danger." ”

“ What a Frenchman describes as the "new British battle-cry" is another source of amusement. Whenever artillery or rifle fire sweeps over their trenches some facetious Tommy is sure to shout, "Are we downhearted?" and is met with a resounding "No!" and laughter all along the line.
To those at home all this fun may seem a little thoughtless, but to those in the fighting line it is perfectly natural and unforced. "Our men lie in the trenches and play marbles with the bullets from shrapnel shells," writes one of the Royal Engineers ”

“ Another Tommy tells of the eager crowds turning out to give our troops "cigars, cigarettes, sweets, fruits, wines, anything we want," and the girls "linking their arms in ours, and stripping us of our badges and buttons as souvenirs."
Then there is the other side of the picture, when the first battles had been fought and the strategic retreat had begun. No praise could be too high for the chivalry and humanity of our soldiers in these dark days. They were almost worshiped by the people wherever they went. ”

“ ⁠O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
⁠But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play,
⁠The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
⁠O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play. ”

“ Stand back a little out of his sight, Tommy. You're a stranger to him and he don't like your looks!"
"Are you not afraid that some one will hear him?" asked Tom.
[168]
"That's not likely, unless that ar Bobby Jennings, or Mr. Grimes, is on the watch. Will Atkins, are you sartin an' sure that you see Bob go home?"
"Am I sartin an' sure that I've got a pair of eyes?" asked Atkins. "I know that he is abed and fast asleep afore this time."
"Gentlemen will please come to order, now!" said Sam, when Friday had succeeded in quieting the dog. "Take off your hats an' set down like men had oughter do. ”

“ It is how he wins through. He always feels fit, and he enjoys himself. Corporal Graham Hodson, Royal Engineers, provides a typical Atkins letter with which to conclude this chapter. "I am feeling awfully well," he writes, "and am enjoying myself no end. All lights are out at eight o'clock, so we lie in our blankets and tell each other lies about the number of Germans we have shot and the hairbreadth escapes we have had. ”

“ Down under the high rocks, wooded to the water's edge, you repeated the work of the forenoon, trying, in addition to the flies already named, a harlequin-looking pattern which you had seen amongst Forrest's tempting collection, a novelty named Tommy Adkins. It did no effective service, however. With a levity pardonable at that time you hummed, "Tommy, make room for your uncle," and put up a large Wilkinson, one of the Kelso-tied double hooks, than which you cannot get better. Down to the weir and back again to the same old tune—nothing. ”

“ His name is George, but we call him Stuffy 'cause he eats so much. The little fellow next Father Bhaer is his boy Rob, and then there's big Franz his nephew; he teaches some, and kind of sees to us.”
“He plays the flute, doesn't he?” asked Nat as Tommy rendered himself speechless by putting a whole baked apple into his mouth at one blow.
Tommy nodded, and said, sooner than one would have imagined possible under the circumstances, “Oh, don't he, though? And we dance sometimes, and do gymnastics to music. I like a drum myself, and mean to learn as soon as ever I can.” ”