Tag: 1929 Page 1 of 3
By Gregory Clark, March 9, 1929.
“ALL swing out in your places ALL!
Allemany left with the lady on your left,
RIGHT to your honey and grand right and left,
Your right foot up and your left foot DOWN,
Hand over hand and so on around,
And hurry up boys or you’ll never git around!
And grab that calico and roll ‘er all around!”
If any of Toronto’s Hill-billies think they have a monopoly of whoopee, they have another blush coming.
You will not see whoopee at the Silver Slipper or the Palais Royale1: nor at the elite ballrooms where those who dwell north of the parliament buildings commit their shuckings or comings-out; nor at King St. Childs nor anywhere those young people gather whose watchword is whoopee.
If you want to see real whoopee being made. you must go to one of those more democratic dance halls where the country square dance is being reintroduced.
When Henry Ford announced. four or five years ago, that the old-fashioned square dances had more in them than all the foxtrots, one steps and waltzes in the world, we all reflected that a man who was as right about motor cars as Mr. Ford must be wrong on all other subjects. We newspapermen were blamed at that time for making a rather feeble attempt to create a diversion by trying to revive a folk-habit that was as dead as the oil lamp.
But Henry was right again. The square dance, the country dance, is coming back.
Not in the country, where it never went out. But in the city. In literally dozens of Toronto dance halls, three or four square dances are part of every regular program. Three years ago, if anyone had suggested a square dance in such sophisticated company as you will find in a College St. or Dufferin St. dance hall, he would have been amongst the police court complainants the next morning. But in three short years the country dance has come home with a whoopee and a bang. You will see in Toronto to-day any amount of young men and women who never were farther into the country than Agincourt and whose ancestry has never tasted pump water for five generations trying to forget the languor of the one-step and concentrating with all their might on “rollin’ her around for the good of the floor.”
A week or two ago, the Vegetable Growers Association rented the Silver Slipper for a Wednesday night and invited the country gentry from all around to come in to town for a little real old time whoopee. An orchestra that can do hoe-down till the rooster crows was put in the place of that skilful spine-chiller of saxophone and highwayman guitar. A caller stood on a high platform ready to call off the figures and reels. And from Malton and Brampton, Georgetown and Kleinburg, Cooksville and Bolton, came the farmers by the hundred, to foregather in this palace of the modern dance. And the silken hangings and the jazz decorations shuddered and quivered and turned pale as the building rocked and thundered to the healthy dances in which men are gents and ladies are honeys.
That is the beginning. There were enough Toronto Hill-billies present that night to see the out-of-town people making real whoopee. And they went away entertaining curious and exciting thoughts. It will not be long now until square dances will appear even on the highly waxed floors where you can’t “Tamarack ‘er down on the old white pine” without spoiling the polish. It will only be a little while until no debutante will feel she is really “out” until she has participated in a country dance and touched the hands of all her multitude of guests in the really stately and very beautiful measures of an old-fashioned barn dance.
The National Dance of Canada
This writer has seen all kinds of national dances. In the course of newspaper work, a man is tipped off to go and see all kinds of Slav and Czechoslovak national dances being done “right here in Toronto.” And it is supposed to be very quaint and colorful. But the story we have been neglecting for years has been right at our door. The national dance of Ontario, of Canada and of America. For the same dances are done in Quebec and Alberta and Colorado as are done in Ontario. For stamping, they make the Russian dance seem sissy. For whirling, they make the Dervish dances seem timid. For whoopee, they seem to be proof that there is something in the air of a city that takes the ginger and life out of the best of us.
George W. Wade is the premier caller in Toronto. He and his hoe-down orchestra have been quietly riding along for two or three years on the mounting crest of the country dance’s popularity. To start with, most of their engagements were out in the towns. Their largest dances were in St. Catharines, Beamsville and such places as Columbus. Their competition in the smaller towns and villages were the old-time fiddlers and the local callers. But when a city band of hoe-down musicians and a caller who had picked up his art during his youthful travels all over Canada and the northern states began to compete with the limited musical accompaniment of the countryside, the return of the country dance to the city was coming in sight.
To-day, this band is one of many bands qualified to provide the stuff that makes the square dance. And amongst several dance halls that are specializing in country dances in Toronto, Mr. Wade’s company stages a regular weekly dance which attracts hundreds.
The night we attended this old-time dance, there were five hundred and fifty people dancing on the floor of the good-sized association hall. They were packed into every corner. There was not room for another set. Many were turned away.
Outside the hall were parked cars that were muddy with the highways from away up country. Yes, actually! There were country people who drove thirty and forty miles into Toronto to attend a barn dance in a city dance hall! After all, what is thirty miles to anybody now? An, hour or so in the car.
It used to be, a few years ago, a sort of good-humored idea for city folks to drive out into the country to attend an old-time dance. Now it is the fashion for the country people to drive into the city to attend an old-time dance!
It was a great sight. The public hall filled up rapidly with people of all ages. That sameness of age that is characteristic of city dance halls was strikingly absent. Grandmothers came and sat on the chairs along the side of the floor. They did not dance, but their families and friends formed their sets of four couples out on the floor where the old folks could watch them, with much clapping and much smiling and laughter. Middle-aged people were there to dance. Young people danced with them.
The very first thought that entered our heads as we looked down on the assembling throng of people was that this was some sort of a family gathering. There were parents and children uncles and nieces. You could see that. Family parties. And family parties, as you know well, the modern dance had just about scotched.
It’s a Real Old Hoe-Down
Well up at the far end of the floor, on the platform, sat the six musicians, a piano, two fiddles, a banjo and a guitar. And most important of all, the caller. Mr. Wade, leaning nonchalantly – and nonchalance is an essential part of the caller’s art as is the weirdly exciting rhythm of his voice – leaning gracefully against the piano.
The caller cried:
“Partners for a square dance.”
And in great excitement and laughter, with the fluttering of bright colored dresses, very different from the pale elegance of a ballroom’s color, with its ivories and golds and georgettes, the sets were formed. A set is four couples. And they form in a square, couples facing couples.
Then with a great bang. the orchestra started up its lively, old-fashioned and familiar strain. Above the loud shuffle and rhythm of the dancers’ feet, there rose the clear, droning baritone of the caller. In haunting, broken rhythm, with strange stresses and accents on certain words, some of it sung for a brief instant, some of it droned in perfect time to the music, some of it almost shouted, the control of the country dance proceeded.
For the caller actually makes the dance. Figure by figure, step by step, he intones the instructions for every single movement amongst these five hundred and more men and women all dancing for their lives and all doing it perfectly together:
“ALL swing out in your places ALL!
Allemany left with the lady on your left,
RIGHT to your honey and grand right and left,
Your right foot up and your left foot DOWN,
Hand over hand and so on around,
And hurry up boys or you’ll never git around!
And grab that calico and roll ‘er all around!”
The quick, flickering tune of the music. the vast swish, swish, of the dancers’ feet, punctuated with stamps when the caller demands it. Each set weaving, in and out, bowing to each other in quaint little gestures of “footin'” and ending with a swing – each gent seizing his lady and whirling her around.
The pattern of all these square dances is the same. The first “change” as it is called, puts each couple through the same figures. one after another. Then comes the second change of the dance, in which the caller puts not each couple but pairs of couples or four dancers through the same figures in turn.
And then comes the third and last phase, the “break-down.” This is the climax of the dance, in which the caller, with great smoothness and never a slip. puts not the couples but the entire set of eight through their figures, at ever increasing pace, with louder music, with cries and laughter from the dancers, through swift figures, more intricate than ever, until the dance ends in a great, whirling exciting whoopee. And instead of the little patter of polite hand-clapping that marks the end of the modern dance, there rises a tumult of cheers and girls’ laughter. No encore for that. Just cheering the caller and the fiddlers and themselves for a great old hop-down.
“The Gents Their Black and Tan”
In between the country dances, these city functions insert a fox trot or a waltz. And how stupid and dull it looks compared to the picturesque, leaping, exciting mass of movement that had been on the floor a moment ago. The pairs, all young folk, dawdle around, the floor, looking blankly over each other’s shoulders. The modern dance, if it is exercise, is an exercise for the legs from the knees down. The country dance is an exercise for every muscle in the body, up to the facial muscles and the scalp..
After having in recent years seen people pay money to sit in Massey Hall to watch Russians and Sticko-Bohunkians2 and other nationals perform their national dances, we suggest that somebody rise up in our midst and put on an exhibition of native Canadian country dances. The least the Exhibition could do would be to set up amplifiers all over the Exhibition grounds, and on a special gala day, bust loose with music and a caller, and create the spectacle of “sets” forming up all over the lawns and pavements of the whole Exhibition grounds to do square dances on the green.
The Black and Tan is one that brought the most tremendous cheers at this country dance we attended on Bathurst St.
“Head couples out to the right and balance there,” was the first instruction of the caller. And the big room grew all alive with motion and color. Then the swing of the tune:
The ladles cross their lily white hands,
The gents their black and tan,
The ladies bow and the gents bow-bow
And turn them all around.”
And away they go, for five full minutes of increasing excitement and verve.
“Jump right up and come right down,
Hop up straight and come down eight,
Hurry up boys you’ll all be late,
Roll ’em all around on the garden gate!”
Or another version:
Hop right up and never come down,
Your band over heel and never come down,
Heavy on the white pine and ALL come down,
Tamarack ‘er down on the old pine floor,
Grab your honey and swing ‘er some more!”
And he has them coming down light on their toes until he calls them ALL to come down; and the beat of that tune is enough to make even a city slicker vault out of his side-line chair and join the fun.
Allemany left means to turn from your partner to the lady on your left, hook your arm through hers, swing around her and then take your own partner’s hand and swing past her, grand chain, right and left. first your right hand and then your left, weaving your way in and out past the others in your set, and when you reach your own partner again, you seize her with an expression of joy and “roll ‘er all around for the good of the floor.”
“Balance all” means that every couple does few little jig steps, facing their opposite couple.
Why Not Barn Dances for Debs?
But the king piece of the whole night of dancing was the “old-fashioned barn dance.”
The dancers formed in two huge circles. Ladies the outer circle facing in and gents in the inner circle facing out.
There was no calling out for this number. The orchestra played that well-known air, “Wall I Swan.”
And here was the whole measure:
Each couple hand in hand, all facing one direction, took two slow paces forward, two back, waltzed three steps. ran three quick steps for ward, three steps back, the gents side-stepped two slow paces inward away from their partners then took three quick faces outward again and took the next girl forward in the circle.
In effect, here was a great ring of people, moving slowly and rhythmically, closing in, opening out, like some gigantic flower moving its petals, and all the time, the gents moved forward, the girls staying on the same place, but each gent dancing for a few bars with a different gal in turn.
What a beautiful and stately sort of a dance for a deb dance! How could a girl more gracefully and graciously meet all the men! How completely social the old-fashioned barn dance is. The modern dance is mean and stingy and anti-social. The barn dance and the other round dances, meet everybody up with everybody else. “I run the old mill (two slow steps forward) Over to Reubensville (two slow steps back) My name’s Joshua Ebenezer Spry” (three brief waltz steps).
Then the three little running steps, hand in hand, the three steps back, then the gents making their two slow sideways steps from their partner and three quick steps forward to their new partner.
Anybody who can whistle that simple old tune can do these steps, and that’s all there is to the old-fashioned barn dance, except that when a roomful of happy, solemn people are doing it, there is a lilt, a grace and a swing to it that has the mysterious effect on your eye that a marching regiment has, as if once upon a time long ago, man had rhythm in him and had lost it. But finds it, for a little while in the old country dances.
George Wade says that the square dances were bound to come back again when musicians became numerous enough to overflow the city markets and overrun into the country music market. In the city, people see so much of each other that when they dance, they want to dance alone, in isolated couples, as if they were apart from all the world. But in the country, they are glad to be together and they want to dance in company.
As soon as orchestras began to visit the country, the folks were livened up and they danced. But not the lonely dances. The company dances.
The logical procedure, as for these musicians, is to bring back to the city some of the spirit and excitement of these social dances. All the older people, all the people whose youth was spent in the country who had not learned the modern dances, were pining for their fun. And it came. It’s here. Hundreds of people are doing it.
And it is whoopee unconfined.
Editor’s Notes:
- These were popular dance halls in Toronto. Most have been demolished, but the Palais Royale still exists. ↩︎
- This is just a made-up word to mean some country you have never heard of. ↩︎
The mill rate refers to the property tax rate. 1 mill is the same as a 10th of a percent. So the joke is the town is up in arms over a very small (0.00625%) tax increase.
“What can you do alone?”
“I’ve got a secret,” said Fannah.
“This is crazy,” cried the sergeant-major. “You’ll be plunked the minute you move.”
“No, I won’t. They won’t see me.”
“They won’t see a balloon!”
By Gregory Clark, December 21, 1929.
“Snow!”
The sergeant-major made it sound like a curse.
To the Canadian corps as a whole, burrowed in for the winter along the Lens front, the snow, fine and crisp, and comforting the ghastly ground swiftly, had a merry touch of home. The sentries, staring out over No Man’s Land, felt the strain relaxing as the white blanket grew. But the sergeant-major of C company of the Central Ontario regiment sensed a panic rising in his bosom.
“Now what the hell’re we going to do!” he groaned, as he thrust his way along the trench to the company officer’s dugout.
At the entrance, fat Captain Fannah was standing in the dark listening to the crisp pellets tinkling on his steel hat.
“Merry Christmas, sawm-major!” he squeaked.
“Sir, this jiggers the works,” said the sergeant-major, jabbing his heels into the bathmat1 by way of salute. “This snow is going to last. No Man’s Land is already white with it. The raid will be impossible.”
“What’s time?” demanded, the pudgy captain. Offhand, Captain Fannah was a type of man you would not like. It took a week to like him. And then you gave him your shirt.
“Nine-fifteen, sir.”
“Raid’s at one ack emma2,” said Captain Fannah. “Plenty of time to dope it out. Reduce the party from the full platoon to ten men. And inform Lieutenant Beaurien that I will take the raid instead of him.”
“Very good, sir. Will I report back to you or stay in the trench?”
“Tell Lieutenant Beaurien to take over trench duty. You come back. I want you tonight, sawm-major.”
The little fat captain spoke querulously3, like a head-waiter busy with a banquet. He struggled, grunting, into the dugout entrance.
The sergeant-major hurried to the left where Eleven Platoon stood, and picking up its sergeant, went on to where the platoon officer, Beaurien, was sitting on the firestep4 discussing the impending raid with a few of his toughest men.
“Sir,” said the sergeant-major, stamping his salute on the frosty bathmats, “here’s good news for most of your platoon. Captain Fannah has ordered plans changed in view of the snow. He will lead the raid himself, and will take only ten men instead of the whole platoon. With his compliments, will you please take command of the trench and act for him until further orders.”
Beaurien was visibly relieved. The good word spread along the trench and down into dugouts where Eleven Platoon lay worrying about the raid and the snow. But the handful of choice spirits who had been gathered round Beaurien gave no sign of joy. A raid is a jumpy business. A battle is one thing, with its tumult and vasty compass. In a battle you feel as if all the world is with you in disaster. But a little raid has a lonesomeness that eats into the core of a man. From the length of a brigade front away, a raid, with its two battery barrage, sounds like a drunken celebration with giant fire crackers. And you wonder about the little handful of lads that are scurrying about in the night beneath that angry vortex of shellfire in the heart of the great tropic stillness of the long No Man’s Land.
In every platoon were a half-dozen hard-boiled characters who invariably found themselves selected for raids, battle patrols, wire-cutting and the more desperate adventures of trench warfare. Five of these, standing about their relieved lieutenant, knew that no matter how the raiding party might be reduced, from thirty-five men to ten, they would be amongst the ten. And they were right.
“Well, troops,” said Beaurien, rising. “I don’t mind telling you I have been glad to sit down ever since this snow started falling. My legs is bad.”
“I’ve Got a Secret”, Said Fannah
Beaurien, with a white and purple ribbon on his tunic and enough bloody exploits to his credit to permit him the luxury of confessing fear, produced his little platoon roster from his pocket.
“You five will go,” he said. “Each of you pick one other man. How’s that? Then there can be no belly-aching about the wrong man being sent.”
The five departed along the trench to select their voluntary partners in desperation.
Raids were the peculiar pride of the Canadians. They had, in a sense, originated them. At any rate, back in Fifteen, they had become aware of a higher rate of individual initiative which existed amongst Canadians and had developed various forms of raids, some with the famous “box” barrage, three walls of shell-fire, the fourth or near wall being left open for the entry of the raiders. Then they went on to the stealth raid in its many forms, where no gunfire disturbed the silence of night, but only the sudden whang of bombs bursting and the muffled crack of pistols held close to the stomachs of surprised sentries in the violated trench. It was a stealth raid that Eleven Platoon was about to pull.
“And how,” Captain Fannah was saying into the little field telephone deep in his candle-lit, coke-gassey dugout, “can we make a stealth raid across a blanket of virgin snow?”
“Fannah,” came back the colonel’s Royal Military College voice, “brigade says we have got to – got to – get a prisoner for identification. I have put it up to you. This snow may last a week. I realize the mess this makes, but, my dear Fannah, you’ve got to figure it out. You can shift the time if you like.”
“One ack emma,” said Captain Fannah, in his pained voice. “They will go at one ack emma, colonel, but I am reducing the party to ten.”
“And Beaurien taking them?”
“Mmmm,” said Fannah, knowing that the crackling telephone, with its lines laid across the waste of mud between his and the colonel’s dugout, six hundred yards back, would convert this sound into an affirmative.
The sergeant-major, sitting on a cartridge-box beside the captain, filched a cigarette out of the captain’s leather case. These two, off parade and when no other ranks were looking, were more than comrades.
“What’s the dope?” asked the sergeant-major, as the phone was laid down.
“The Stokes guns5,” said Fannah, “are going to start right away and make a lot of dark holes out in that white No Man’s Land. They will fire at random around the open and over towards the German trench. Tell Beaurien to get as many of our men as he can risk out of the front line, so that some of the Stokes can fall short, close to our trench. It will look like a warming-up from a new bunch of Stokes just come in.”
“Won’t Fritz be on the lookout?”
“The Stokes will stop at twelve midnight. Starting at one o’clock, I want you to get the boys, one by one, out into the best Stokes holes that occur. Scatter them out from Tivvy Sap.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” said Fannah, sighing deeply and looking guiltily away from his sergeant-major, “when they are in position I go over and go in.”
“What!”
“You know there is a gap in their wire?”
“I found it. But they may have closed it since last night. But what the devil can you do alone?”
“I’ve got a secret,” said Fannah.
“This is crazy,” cried the sergeant-major. “You will be plunked the minute you move.”
“No I won’t. They won’t see me.”
“They won’t see a balloon!”
“It will have to be done as slyly as possible. All I want them for is to cover me coming back. Just plain rifle fire. Some of us are going to get hurt, but I can’t see that can be helped.”
The first faint thump of the Stokes shells vibrated in the dugout and made the candles flicker.
“Get out and watch that Stokes stuff and pick a nice bunch of dark spots for the boys to lie on.”
“I don’t like your scheme,” said the sergeant-major, standing up and looking at his officer grimly. “I think you have gone nuts.”
“They won’t be able to see me,” said Captain Fannah. “I will be all white.”
Disappearing in the Snow
A random fire from Stokes mortars disturbed the night. These softly belching little cannon hurled their whiskey-bottle shells high in the air, to fall and lie a horrid moment on the ground before they went off with a terrific crash. They blew shallow, five-foot-broad patches of darkness on the snow-covered ground. A steady, thickening whirl of snow continued to fall. Machine guns woke up on the German side and chattered about nervously. Flares went up more frequently, to dazzle the new fallen snow. Fritz was on the alert. But the Stokes fire neither increased nor seemed to concentrate. It gave a lazy, casual and poorly-aimed battering to a strip of No Man’s Land for a three-hundred-yard stretch. About eleven o’clock, puzzled by this desultory crashing, the Germans ordered their field guns to fire some retaliation, which cheerfully increased the number of dark spots out in the snow.
As if quelled by this come-back, the Stokes died away at midnight. And peace, oddly spiritualized by the snow, settled over the line. The one point of discord in miles of silence was stilled.
About twelve-thirty the first of the covering party, crouched and swift, skipped out an opening in the Canadian wire and flung himself into one of the shell holes. There was a breathless moment of waiting, but no hint that the figure had been noticed came from the German trench. The bank of barbed wire, which was a filigree of rust and silver, acted as a dark screen for the raiders’ movements. Another figure made the dash, then another. Obviously the German sentries were lulled by the same feeling of security the new fallen snow gave the Canadians. One by one the ten men of Eleven Platoon got into the dark splashes on No Man’s Land where the Stokes and the German field guns had left their scars.
Then appeared queer and ghostly little figure in Eleven Platoon’s trench. His head was swathed in white field bandages. His legs and feet were likewise wrapped tightly in white. Over his arm he carried a large white garment. And from amongst the bandages emerged Captain Fannah’s plaintive voice:
“If any man fires from this trench until I return I will personally lame him!”
Beaurien and the other two lieutenants of C Company were with the captain to see him off. The sergeant-major was the last to go out before Fannah, and he was to go furthest and be closest to the lone white raider when the entry into the German trench was attempted. Shaking hands with the captain, the sergeant-major himself wrapped in bandages in different spots so that he appeared raggedly camouflaged, climbed over the parados6 and disappeared into the silence.
Not a Shot was Fired
Then Captain Fannah shook out the garment he was carrying and drew it over his head. He stood forth absolutely white, save for pencil-wide strip across his eyes.
“No shooting from the trench,” he said again. “The boys in front will do any shooting required.”
And helped by his lieutenants from behind the pudgy captain grunted his way over the parapet. The thick snow fell like feathers.
“I can’t see him already,” said one of the sentries.
Beaurien stood up on the fire-step. Through the haze of falling snow could faintly be seen the scattered dark splotches where the shells had cleared a space. But no movement disclosed the fact that in eleven of them, staggered across towards the German lines, lay eleven men with their rifles cocked and pointed to answer any flash from the enemy trench. And not a trace could be seen of Fannah, though Beaurien knew his stout little officer could not have got far on his dangerous mission.
A long time passed. Suspense during a stealth raid is a sensation never otherwise experienced. The burst of a bomb, the crack of a shot comes like a note of joy to break the tension. But no sound came from white-shrouded No Man’s Land. The usual night silence lay like a desert stillness, and you would never have guessed that within a square mile ten thousand men were standing with their wits wide awake. Only occasionally the German flares mounted and lobbed vividly through the glistening night. But there was no flare-thrower on duty closer than three hundred yards from Eleven Platoon’s front. Beaurien watched for a telltale moving shadow when the flares were falling, but on the shining shadows of No Man’s Land nothing stirred.
After twenty minutes that had seemed hours there was a quiet movement at the German trench, a hundred yards away. Shadows in the misty snowfall, dark figures moving fitfully against the white.
“Psst!” hissed the sentry beside Beaurien. A sergeant came running.
“Figures moving over against the German wire!” he cried in a low voice to Beaurien.
“I see them. Get back to your duty.”
Yet not a shot was fired, no flick of orange pecked in the darkness.
Then quite distinctly, moving slowly towards the Canadian lines, came two figures looming black against the snow. On they came, stumbling, hesitating. After a moment’s intent staring it appeared that they walked with their arms in the air over their heads.
“My God!” said the sentry, removing his safety-catch.
“Keep still, you…”
“They Thought I was a Fairy”
A greenish flare popped into the air opposite, burst and lighted the whole scene in dazzling splendor. The two figures stopped dead still in their tracks, their arms on high, lividly silhouetted against the snow. Beaurien, watching the shadows, not the objects themselves, as an old-timer should, saw what he was looking for, a small, round shadow in rear of the long shadows of the two standing Germans.
A shout came from the German trench. The flare lobbed to the ground and went out with a loud hiss. A shot was fired from the enemy. Instantly two shots from the dark shell holes spat back. The two dark figures against the snow began to run, hands held appealingly high. A machine gun opened from the German side. The shell holes began to spit, spit, redly. The way a typhoon could spring in an instant out of the solitude of No Man’s Land was a miracle not comparable to anything in the temperate zone. A very gale of machine gun fire rose out of the German front and support lines. White flares and red signal flares zipped and lobbed into the sky. The German artillery opened up with its usual smartness. But not a sign or sound came from the Canadian trench. The two tall Germans, guided by some unseen force in rear of them, wriggled and scrambled unhurt into the Canadian trench. A white-robed figure slid pantingly in on their heels. One by one the men in the shell holes leaped and crouched back through their wire gap. Two were wounded in the rush. The sergeant-major was last, a wounded man clinging to him.
In Captain Fannah’s dugout, ten minutes later, while his batman unwound the bandage from his head and legs, the purple-faced company commander stared up sulkily into the face of his colonel.
“I understood,” said the colonel, breathless after his dash up from his headquarters, “that Beaurien was doing this show?”
“No, sir,” said Captain Fannah. “I distinctly told you that I was going.”
“I didn’t hear you. Damn it, Fannah, you have no right to be fooling about on operations of this sort. We need you. You keep out of these things. Let the young fellows do it.”.
“Now tell me,” said the colonel, “how did this thing come off?”
“Very simply. I dressed all in white. I had a covering party in the Stokes holes. When I got close to their wire I heard voices singing softly. I had found the gap they had in their wire for working parties and patrols, and the voices were coming from the trench directly in front of the gap.
“So I crawled in the gap, got my pinnie7 caught in the wire a couple of times and finally going barely an inch at a time, got to where could see these two men here.
“They were singing what seemed to be Christmas carols. I guess the snow affects Germans the way it does us. Anyway, instead of watching the gap as was their duty they were facing each other, revelling in close harmony. They would brake off, argue quietly and then try the passage again, to get it just right. So while they were working out their harmonies I got within a few feet of them. Then I held up my pistol and said distinctly – ‘Bleib still8!'”
“They blibed. All they could see was the pistol about two feet from their heads, suspended in space. I told them, in my good high school German, to put their hands high and with me to come. They thought I was a fairy or a ghost of something. German folklore has other winter characters besides Santa Claus.
“So I digged them in the ribs to show them the visible gun was real. And here they are.”
“But where,” said the colonel, picking up the garment which Fannah had over his head, “did you get this? Why Fannah, it is a flannel nightshirt!”
“That,” said Fannah, “is my dear old mother’s Christmas present to her boy in the trenches, received in the mail.”
Editor’s Notes:
- In World War 1, a bathmat is another name for a duckboard. Wooden planking were placed at the bottom of trenches and across other areas of muddy or waterlogged ground to avoid sinking into them. ↩︎
- Ack Emma is a British signalmen’s telephone pronunciation of A.M., before noon. So one ack emma is 1 a.m. ↩︎
- Querulously means in a complaining way, especially using a weak high voice. ↩︎
- A firestep is narrow ledge, located inside a trench, that allows soldiers to see over the parapet. ↩︎
- In World War 1, Stokes mortars were 3 inch mortars. ↩︎
- Parados were an elevation of earth behind a fortified place as a protection against attack from the rear, especially a mound along the back of a trench. ↩︎
- A pinnie is short for the British word “pinafore,” a term that originally meant “an apron or sleeveless garment”. ↩︎
- German for “Stay still”. ↩︎
This illustration by Jim accompanied an article by Ephraim Acres (the pen name of Hugh Templin). He wrote many stories about “Glenlivit”, a fictional small town, for the Star Weekly in the late 1920s and early 1930s. “Glenlivit” was also a pseudonym for the town of Fergus Ontario, where he was the newspaper editor of the Fergus New Record.
These drawings went with a story by Frank Mann Harris from November 2, 1929, about the old method of making a kid smoke a cigar or other real tobacco to make him sick, and supposedly prevent him from smoking in the future. The joke here is Harris recalls all of the awful stuff kids smoked on the farm, so having real tobacco was actually a refreshing change.
This comic was published shortly after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
These illustrations by Jim went with a story by Frank Mann Harris who was a regular contributor to the Star Weekly in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The story outlined how the modern (1929) children could travel far and fast by airplane or car, and think nothing of it, while “back in the old days”, there was more wonder and discovery by travelling slow.
This is another comic where Jim shows fishermen keeping a jug of buttermilk tied to the boat and thrown to the bottom like an anchor to keep it cold. I assume it was really buttermilk, but I imagine it could be something else in those days of Prohibition.