In The Firing Line

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:

We were in a scrubby position just outside Mons from Saturday afternoon till Monday morning. After four hours each of our six big guns was put out of action. Either the gunners were killed or wounded, or the guns themselves damaged. For the rest of the time – that is, until Monday morning, when we retired – we had to stick the German fire without being able to retaliate. It was bad enough to stand this incessant banging away, but it made it worse not to be able to reply.

All day Sunday and all Sunday night the Germans continued to shrapnel us. At night it was just hellish. We had constructed some entrenchments, but it didn’t afford much cover and our losses were very heavy. On Monday we received the order to retire to the south of the town, and some hours later, when the roll-call was called, it was found that we had 300 dead alone, including four officers.

Then an extraordinary thing happened. Me and some of my pals began to dance. We were just dancing for joy at having escaped with our skins, and to forget the things we’d seen a bit, when bang! and there came a shell from the blue, which burst and got, I should think, quite twenty of us.

That’s how some of us got wounded, as we thought we had escaped. Then another half-dozen of us got wounded this way. Some of our boys went down a street near by, and found a basin and some water, and were washing their hands and faces when another shell burst above them and laid most of them out.

What happened to us happened to the Gloucesters. Their guns, too, were put out of action, and, like us, they had to stand the shell-fire for hours and hours before they were told to retire. What we would have done without our second in command I don’t know.

During the Sunday firing he got hit in the head. He had two wounds through the cap in the front and one or two behind, and lost a lot of blood. Two of our fellows helped to bind up his head, and offered to carry him back, but he said, “It isn’t so bad. I’ll be all right soon.” Despite his wounds and loss of blood, he carried on until we retired on Monday. Then, I think, they took him off to hospital.

A stalwart chap of the Cheshires here broke in.

Our Cheshire chaps were also badly cut up. Apart from the wounded, several men got concussion of the brain by the mere explosions. It was awful! Under cover of their murderous artillery fire, the German infantry advanced to within three and five hundred yards of our position. With that we were given the order to fix bayonets, and stood up for the charge. That did it for the German infantry! They turned tail and ran for their lives.

Our captain cried out, “Now you’ve got ’em, men!” But we hadn’t. Their artillery begins with that to fire more hellish than ever, and before you could almost think what to do a fresh lots of the “sausages” came along, and we had to beat a retreat.

During the retreat one of our sergeants was wounded and fell. With that our captain runs back and tries to lift him. As he was doing so he was struck in the foot, and fell over. We thought he was done for, but he scrambles up and drags the sergeant along until a couple of us chaps goes out to help ’em in. You should have seen his foot when he took his boot off – I mean the captain. It wasn’t half smashed.

How a number of British troops made a dash in the night to save some women and children from the Germans was told by Lance-corporal Tanner, of the 2nd Oxfordshire and Bucks Light Infantry. On the Sunday the regiment arrived at Mons.

We took up our position in the trenches, he said, and fought for some time. In the evening the order came to retire, and we marched back to Conde, with the intention of billeting for the night and having a rest. Suddenly, about midnight, we were ordered out, and set off to march to the village of Douai, some miles away, as news had reached us that the Germans were slaughtering the natives there.

It was a thrilling march in the darkness, across the unfamiliar country. We were liable to be attacked at any moment, of course, but everyone was keen on saving the women and children, and hurried on. We kept the sharpest lookout on all sides, but saw nothing of the enemy.

When we reached Douai a number of the inhabitants rushed out to meet us. They were overjoyed to see us, and speedily told what the Germans had done. They had killed a number of women and children. With fixed bayonets we advanced into the village, and we saw signs all around us of the cruelty of the enemy.

Private R. Wills, of the Highland Light Infantry, who also took part in the march to the village, here continued the story.

We found that most of the Germans had not waited for our arrival, and there were only a few left in the place. However, we made sure that none remained there.

We started a house-to-house search. Our men went into all the houses, and every now and then they found one or two of the enemy hiding in a corner or upstairs. Many of them surrendered at once, others did not.

When we had cleared the village, some of us lay down on the pavements, and snatched an hour’s sleep. At 3.30 we marched away again, having rid the place of the enemy, and, getting back to camp, were glad to turn in.

A sergeant of the Royal Field Artillery, who was wounded by shrapnel just outside Mons village, said that the German artillery fire was good; once the enemy’s gunners got the range they did well.

Their shooting was every bit as good as ours, and although our battery made excellent practice, three of our men were killed, and twenty out of thirty-six were wounded. I lay on the field all night, and was rescued the next morning. Fortunately, the Germans did not come and find me during those long hours of loneliness.

In such tales of these men in hospital, and in the letters they have written home, there is a common agreement that the German rifle shooting is beneath contempt – “they shoot from the hip and don’t seem to aim at anything in particular;” but their artillery practice is spoken of with respect and admiration. The German artillery is very good, writes Private Geradine, of the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers, but their aeroplanes help them a lot. It is a pretty sight to see the shells burst in the night, he adds – it’s like Guy Fawkes Day!

I like too, such robust cheerfulness and gay good-humour in face of the horrors of death as sounds through the letter of Sapper Bradley:

I have never seen our lads so cheery as they are under great trials. You couldn’t help being proud of them if you saw them lying in the trenches cracking jokes or smoking while they take pot shots at the Germans… We have very little spare time now, but what we have we pass by smoking concerts, sing-songs, and story-telling. Sometimes we have football for a change, with a German helmet for a ball, and to pass the time in the trenches have invented the game of guessing where the next German shell will drop. Sometimes we have bets on it, and the man who guesses correctly the greatest number of times takes the stakes.

And surely no less do I like the equally courageous but more sombre outlook of the Scottish Private who complained of the famous retreat from Mons, It was “Retire! retire! retire!” when our chaps were longing to be at them. But they didn’t swear about it, because being out there and seeing what we saw makes you feel religious.

I like that wonderful diary kept by a driver of the 4th Ammunition Column, 3rd section, R.F.A. It was sent over from Paris by Mr. Harold Ashton, The Daily News correspondent, and is as naïvely and minutely realistic as if it were a page out of Defoe. The driver’s interests are naturally centred in his horses, they hold the first place in his regard, the excitements of the war coming second. He records how he went from Hendon to Southampton on the 21st August: