Not waving but hurrahing
Sir: I agree entirely, as I generally do, with all Nigel Nicolson has to say on music and noise (Arts, 16 July), but when he said that no Englishman has shouted 'hurrah' for the last two centuries, he omitted the word 'vol- untarily'.
In September 1939 I was a raw recruit at Crookham near Aldershot. One day our brief rest spell was broken by a call to parade. Mustered, we stood bemused to hear that the King and Queen (Queen Mother now of course) were going to drive by in an open car, presumably to raise our morale.
Our sergeant, an old regular, was large, red-faced and explicit. We were to line up on either side of the road and, as they passed, bellow 'hurrah' at the tops of our voices. It was to be an all-out effort — if they could not hear us back in Aldershot, we'd all be on a fizzer.
An old hand, a reservist near me, called out, 'Wave us caps, sar'nt?'
`You can wave your bloody pricks for all I care, as long as you bawl your bleeding lungs out.'
I bet we raised the royal morale that afternoon.
Arthur White
931 5th Street East, Sonoma, California, USA
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