Part 3

I do not know if this letter will ever get to you or not, but I am writing on the chance that it will. A lot has happened since I last wrote to you. We marched straight up to Belgium from France, and the first day we arrived my company was put on outposts for the night. During the night we dug a few trenches, etc., so did not get much sleep. The next day the Germans arrived, and I will try and describe the fight. We were only advanced troops of a few hundred holding the line of a canal. The enemy arrived about 50,000 strong. We held them in check all day and killed hundreds of them, and still they came. Finally, of course, we retired on our main body. I will now explain the part I played. We were guarding a railway bridge over a canal. My company held a semicircle from the railway to the canal. I was nearest the railway. A Scottish regiment completed the semicircle on the right of the railway to the canal. The railway was on a high embankment running up to the bridge, so that the Scottish regiment was out of sight of us. We held the Germans all day, killing hundreds, when about five p.m. the order to retire was eventually given. It never reached us, and we were left all alone. The Germans therefore got right up to the canal on our right, hidden by the railway embankment, and crossed the railway. Our people had blown up the bridge before their departure. We found ourselves between two fires, and I realized we had about 2,000 Germans and a canal between myself and my friends.

We decided to sell our lives dearly. I ordered my men to fix bayonets and charge, which the gallant fellows did splendidly, but we got shot down like nine-pins. As I was loading my revolver after giving the order to fix bayonets I was hit in the right wrist. I dropped my revolver, my hand was too weak to draw my sword. This afterwards saved my life. I had not got far when I got a bullet through the calf of my right leg and another in my right knee, which brought me down. The rest of my men got driven round into the trench on our left. The officer there charged the Germans and was killed himself, and nearly all the men were either killed or wounded. I did not see this part of the business, but from all accounts the gallant men charged with the greatest bravery. Those who could walk the Germans took away as prisoners. I have since discovered from civilians that around the bridge 5,000 Germans were found dead and about 60 English. These 60 must have been nearly all my company, who were so unfortunately left behind.

As regards myself, when I lay upon the ground I found my coat sleeve full of blood, and my wrist spurting blood, so I knew an artery of some sort must have been cut. The Germans had a shot at me when I was on the ground to finish me off; that shot hit my sword, which I wore on my side, and broke in half just below the hilt; this turned the bullet off and saved my life. I afterwards found that two shots had gone through my field glasses, which I wore on my belt, and another had gone through my coat pocket, breaking my pipe and putting a hole through a small collapsible tin cup, which must have turned the bullet off me. We lay out there all night for twenty-four hours. I had fainted away from loss of blood, and when I lost my senses I thought I should never see anything again. Luckily I had fallen on my wounded arm, and the arm being slightly twisted I think the weight of my body stopped the flow of blood and saved me. At any rate, the next day civilians picked up ten of us who were still alive, and took us to a Franciscan convent, where we have been splendidly looked after. All this happened on August 23rd, it is now September 3rd. I am ever so much better, and can walk about a bit now, and in a few days will be quite healed up. It is quite a small hole in my wrist, and it is nearly healed, and my leg is much better; the bullets escaped the bones, so that in a week I shall be quite all right. Unfortunately the Germans are at present in possession of this district, so that I am more or less a prisoner here. But I hope the English will be here in a week, when I shall be ready to rejoin them.

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_Letter 20.--From W. Hawkins, of the 3rd Coldstream Guards:_

I have a nasty little hole through my right arm, but I am one of the lucky ones. My word, it was hot for us. On the Tuesday night when I got my little lot, what I saw put me in mind of a farmer’s machine cutting grass, as the Germans fell just like it. We only lost nine poor fellows, and the German losses amounted to 1,500 and 2,000. So you can guess what it was like. As they were shot down others took their place, as there were thousands of them. The best friend is your rifle with the bayonet. But I soon had mine blown to pieces. How it happened I don’t know.... I got a bullet through the top of my hat. I will bring my hat home and show you. I felt it go through, but it never as much as bruised my head. I had then no rifle, so I was obliged to keep down my head. The bullets were whirling over me by the hundred. I stopped until they got a bit slower, and then I got up and was trying to pull a fellow away that had been shot through the head when I managed to receive a bullet through my arm. When I looked in the direction of the enemy I could see them coming by the thousand. Off I went. I bet I should easily have won the mile that night. I got into the hospital at Landricca amid shot and shell, which were flying by as fast as you like. I got my arm done, and was put to bed. All that night the enemy were trying to blow up the hospital, where they had to turn out the lights so that the Germans could not get the correct range. Then we were taken away in R.A.M.C. vans to Guise, where we slept on the station platform after a nice supper which the French provided.

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_Letter 21.--From Sergeant Griffiths, of the Welsh Regiment, to his parents at Swansea:_

The fighting at Mons was terrible, and it was here that our 4th and 5th Divisions got badly knocked, but fought well. Our artillery played havoc with them. About 10 o’clock on Monday we were suddenly ordered to quit, and quick, too, and no wonder. They were ten to one. Then began that retreat which will go down in history as one of the greatest and most glorious retirements over done. Our boys were cursing because our backs were towards them; but when the British did turn, my word, what a game! The 3rd Coldstreams should be named “3rd Cold Steels,” and no error. Their bayonet charge was a beauty.

Among numerous other such letters that have been published up and down the country is this in which a corporal of the North Lancashire Regiment gives a graphic little picture of his experiences to the _Manchester City News_:

When we got near Mons the Germans were nearer than we expected. They must have been waiting for us. We had little time to make entrenchments, and had to do the digging lying on our stomachs. Only about 300 of the 1,000 I was with got properly entrenched. The Germans shelled us heavily, and I got a splinter in the leg. It is nearly right now, and I hope soon to go back again. We lost fairly heavily, nearly all from artillery fire. Altogether I was fighting for seventy-two hours before I was hit. The German forces appeared to be never-ending. They were round about us like a swarm of bees, and as fast as one man fell, it seemed, there were dozens to take his place.

There is one in which James Scott, reservist, tells his relatives at Jarrow that British soldiers at Mons dropped like logs. The enemy were shot down as they came up, but it was like knocking over beehives--a hundred came up for every one knocked down. He thought the Germans were the worst set of men he had ever seen. Their cavalry drove women and children in front of them in the streets of Mons so that the British could not fire.

A wounded non-commissioned officer of the Pompadours, whose regiment left Wembley Park a week before the fighting began, says that in the four days’ battle commencing at Mons on the Sunday, August 23rd, and lasting until August 26th, they were continually under fire:

We had to beat off several cavalry attacks as well as infantry, and when the trouble seemed to be over the Germans played on us with shrapnel just like turning on a fire hose. Several of our officers were hit on Wednesday. Heavy German cavalry charged us with drawn sabres, and we only had a minute’s warning “to prepare to receive cavalry.” We left our entrenchments, and rallying in groups, emptied our magazines into them as they drew near. Men and horses fell in confused heaps. It was a terrible sight. Still, on they came. They brought their naked sabres to the engage, and we could distinctly hear their words of command made in that piercing, high tone of voice which the Germans affect.

The enemy had a terrible death roll before their fruitless charge was completed, a thick line of dead and wounded marking the ground over which they had charged. We shot the wounded horses, to put them out of their misery, whilst our ambulances set to work to render aid to the wounded. Our Red Cross men make no distinction. Friend and foe get the same medical treatment, that’s where we score over the Germans.

If they had been Uhlans we should not have spared them, as we owe them a grudge for rounding up some Tommies who were bathing. They took their clothes away, and tied the men to trees. We swore to give them a warm time wherever we met them.

A wounded corporal writes:

It looked as if we were going to be snowed under. The mass of men that came at us was an avalanche, and every one of us must have been simply trodden to death and not killed by bullets or shells when our cavalry charged into them on the left wing, not 500 yards from the trench I was in, and cut them up. Our lads did the rest, but the shells afterwards laid low a lot of them.

The following is an extract from a letter received by a gardener from his son:

You complained last year of the swarms of wasps that destroyed your fruit. Well, dad, they were certainly not larger in number than the Germans who came for us. The Germans are cowards when they get the bayonets at them. A young lieutenant, I don’t know his name, was one of the coolest men I have ever seen, and didn’t he encourage our chaps! I saw him bring down a couple of Germans who were leading half a company.

A fact that stands out continually in these tales of eye-witnesses is the overwhelming numbers in which the Germans were hurled upon them. One says they seemed to be rising up endlessly out of the very ground, and as fast as one mass was shot down another surged into its place; the innumerable horde is compared by various correspondents to “a great big battering-ram,” to a gigantic swarm of wasps, to a swarm of bees, to a flock of countless thousands of sheep trying to rush out of a field; to the unceasing pouring of peas out of a sack. It was the sheer mass and weight of this onrush that forced the small British army back on its systematic, triumphant retreat, and probably the most striking little sketch of this phase of the conflict is that supplied by an Irish soldier invalided to Belfast, which I include in the following selection of hospital stories.

The last few weeks have been like a dream to me, says a wounded private of the Middlesex Regiment. After we landed at Boulogne we were magnificently treated, and everyone was in the highest spirits. Then we set off on our marching. We were all anxious to have a slap at the Germans. My word! If they only knew in our country how the Germans are treating our wounded there would be the devil to pay.

It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Mons, I believe, that we got our first chance. We had been marching for days with hardly any sleep. When we took up our position the Germans were nearer than we thought, because we had only just settled down to get some rest when there came the blinding glare of the searchlight. This went away almost as suddenly as it appeared, and it was followed by a perfect hail of bullets. We lost a good many in the fight, but we were all bitterly disappointed when we got the order to retire. I got a couple of bullets through my leg, but I hope it won’t be long before I get back again. We never got near enough to use our bayonets. I only wish we had done. Talk about civilized warfare! Don’t you believe it. The Germans are perfect fiends.

IN HOSPITAL.

(1) _At Southampton._

The first batch of wounded soldiers arrived at Netley on the 28th August, coming from Southampton Docks by the hospital train. A _Daily Telegraph_ correspondent was one of a quiet band of people who had waited silently for many long hours on the platform that runs alongside the hospital for the arrival of the disabled soldiers who had fought so heroically at Mons; and this is his account of what he saw:

Colonel Lucas and staff were all in readiness. Here were wheeling chairs, there stretchers. The preparations for the reception of the broken Tommies could not have been better, more elaborate, or more humane. It was the humanity of it all--the quiet consideration that told of complete preparedness--that made not the least moving chapter of the story that I have to tell. And out of the train stern-faced men began to hobble, many with their arms in a sling.

Here was a hairless-faced, boyish-looking fellow, with his head enveloped in snowy-white bandages; his cheeks were red and healthy, his eyes bright and twinkling. There was pain written across his young face, but he walked erect and puffed away at a cigarette. One man, with arms half clinging round the neck of two injured comrades, went limping to the reception-room, his foot the size of three, and as he went by he smiled and joked because he could only just manage to get along.

When the last of the soldiers able to walk found his way into the hospital, there to be refreshed with tea or coffee or soup, before he was sent to this or that ward, the more seriously wounded were carried from the train. How patient, how uncomplaining were these fellows! One, stretched out on a mattress, with his foot smashed, chatted and smoked until his turn came to be wheeled away. And when the last of these wounded heroes had been lifted out of the train I took myself to the reception-room, and there heard many stories that, though related with the simplicity of the true soldier, were wonderful.

The wounded men were of all regiments and spoke all dialects. They were travel-stained and immensely tired. Pain had eaten deep lines into many of their faces, but there were no really doleful looks. They were faces that seemed to say: “Here we are; what does it all matter; it is good to be alive; it might have been worse.”

I sat beside a private, named Cox. An old warrior he looked. His fine square jaw was black with wire-like whiskers. His eyes shone with the fire of the man who had suffered, so it seemed, some dreadful nightmare.

“And you want me to tell you all about it. Well, believe me, it was just hell. I have been through the Boxer campaign; I went through the Boer War, but I have never seen anything so terrible as that which happened last Sunday. It all happened so sudden. We believed that the Germans were some fifteen miles away, and all at once they opened fire upon us with their big guns.

“Let me tell you what happened to my own regiment. When a roll-call of my company was taken there were only three of us answered, me and two others.” When he had stilled his emotion, he went on. “So unexpected and so terrible was the attack of the enemy, and so overwhelming were their numbers, that there was no withstanding it.”

Before fire was opened a German aeroplane flew over our troops, and the deduction made by Private Cox and several of his comrades, with whom I chatted, was that the aeroplane was used as a sort of index to the precise locality of our soldiers, and, further, that the Germans, so accurate was their gunnery, had been over this particular battlefield before they struck a blow, and so had acquired an intimate knowledge of the country. Trenches that were dug by our men served as little protection from the fire.

Said Cox: “No man could have lived against such a murderous attack. There was a rain of lead, a deluge of lead, and, talk about being surprised, well, I can hardly realise that, and still less believe what happened.”

By the side of Cox sat a lean, fair-haired, freckle-faced private. “That’s right,” he said, by way of corroborating Cox. “They were fair devils,” chimed in an Irishman, who later told me that he came from Connemara. “You could do nothing with them, but I say they are no d---- good as riflemen.”

“No, they’re not, Mike,” ventured a youth. “We got within 400 yards of them, and they couldn’t hit us.”

“But,” broke in the man of Connemara, “they are devils with the big guns, and their aim was mighty good, too. If it had not been they wouldn’t have damaged us as they have done.”

A few yards away was another soldier, also seated in a wheeling chair, with a crippled leg--a big fine fellow he was. He told me his corps had been ambushed, and that out of 120 only something like twenty survived.

On all hands I heard all too much to show that the battle of Mons was a desperate affair. Two regiments suffered badly, but there was no marked disposition on the part of any of the soldiers with whom I chatted to enlarge upon the happenings of last week-end. Rather would they talk more freely of the awful atrocities perpetrated by the Germans.

“Too awful for words,” one said. “Their treatment of women will remain as a scandal as long as the world lasts. We shall never forget; we shall never forgive. I wish I was back again at the front. Englishmen have only got to realise what devilish crimes are being committed by these Germans to want to go and take a hand in the fight. Women were shot, and so were young girls. In fact, it did not seem to matter to the Germans who they killed, and they seemed to take a delight in burning houses and spreading terror everywhere.

“I have got one consolation, I helped to catch four German spies.”

IN HOSPITAL.

(2) _At Belfast._

About 120 officers and men arrived in Belfast on August 31st, direct from the Continent. They were brought here, says the _Daily Telegraph_ local correspondent, to be near their friends, for the men had been in Ulster for a long time before leaving for the front, being stationed in Belfast and later in Londonderry. They sailed from this city for the theatre of war on August 14th, to the number of 900. It was remarkable to note how many of them were injured in the legs and feet. All were conveyed to the hospital at the Victoria Military Barracks. The men were glad to see Belfast again, but those to whom I spoke will be bitterly disappointed if they do not get another opportunity for paying off their score against the Germans.

One soldier told me a plain straightforward story, without any embellishments. What made his tale doubly interesting was the fact that he spoke with the experience of a veteran, having gone through the South African War.

Where the Germans had the advantage, he said, was in the apparently endless number of reserves. No sooner did we dispose of one regiment than another regiment took its place. It just put me in mind of the Niagara Falls--the terrible rush threatening to carry everything before it.

No force on earth could have withstood that cataract, and the fact that our men only fell back a little was the best proof of their strength. At one stage there were, I am sure, six Germans to every one of us. Yet we held our ground, and would still have held it but for the fact that after we had dealt with the men before us another force came on, using the bodies of their dead comrades as a carpet.

The South African War was a picnic compared with this, and on the way home I now and again recoiled with horror as I thought of the awful spectacle which was witnessed before we left the front of piled-up bodies of the German dead. We lost heavily, but the German casualties must have been appalling.

You must remember that for almost twenty-four hours we bore the brunt of the attack, and the desperate fury with which the Germans fought showed that they believed if they were only once past the British forces the rest would be easy. Not only so, but I am sure we had the finest troops in the German army against us.

On the way out I heard some slighting comments passed on the German troops, and no doubt some of them are not worth much, but those thrown at us were very fine specimens indeed. I do not think they could have been beaten in that respect.

IN HOSPITAL.

(3) _At Birmingham._

About 120 English soldiers who had been wounded in and around Mons arrived in Birmingham on September 1st, and were removed to the new university buildings at Bournbrook, where facilities have been provided for dealing with over 1,000 patients. The contingent was the first batch to arrive. Though terribly maimed, and looking broken and tired, the men were cheerful. About twenty had to be carried, but the majority of them were able to walk with assistance.

In the course of conversation with a _Daily Telegraph_ reporter a number of the men spoke of the terrible character of the fighting. The Germans, one man said, outnumbered us by 100 to one. As we knocked them down, they simply filled up their gaps and came on as before.

One of the Suffolk men stated that very few were injured by shot wounds. Nearly all the mischief was done by shells. The Germans, he said, fired six at a time, and if you missed one you got the others.

One poor fellow, whose head was so smothered in bandages that his features could not be seen, remarked, “We could beat them with bladder-sticks if it were not for the shells, which were appalling. The effect could not be described.”

A private of the West Kent Regiment, who was through the Boer War, said there was never anything like the fighting at Mons in South Africa. That was a game of skittles by comparison.

They came at us, he said, in great masses. It was like shooting rabbits, only as fast as you shot one lot down another lot took their place. You couldn’t help hitting them. We had plenty of time to take aim, and if we weren’t reaching the Bisley standard all the time, we must have done a mighty lot of execution. As to their rifle fire, they couldn’t hit a haystack.

A sergeant gunner of the Royal Field Artillery, who was wounded at Tournai, owing to an injury to his jaw was unable to speak, but he wrote on a pad:

I was on a flank with my gun and fired about sixty rounds in forty minutes. We wanted support and could not get it. It was about 500 English trying to save a flank attack, against, honestly, I should say, 10,000. As fast as you shot them down more came. But for their aeroplanes they would be useless. I was firing for one hour at from 1,500 yards down to 700 yards, so you can tell what it was like.

IN HOSPITAL.

(4) _At London._

All the heroism that has been displayed by British troops in the present war will never be known. A few individual cases may chance to be heard of. Others will be known only to the Recording Angel. Two instances of extraordinary bravery are mentioned by a couple of wounded soldiers lying in the London Hospital in the course of a narrative of their own adventures.

One of them, a splendid fellow of the Royal West Kent Regiment, told a _Daily Telegraph_ reporter: