In The Firing Line 6

In The Firing Line 6

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.