C'est l'armée de ceux qui sont morts
En maudissant les Allemands,
Et dont les invincibles renforts
Vengeront le sang innocent.[[1]]
With such an overwhelming attack working forward in front and on both flanks the only problem left was how to get the British force away with the smallest loss. To remain obviously meant certain annihilation sooner or later. As a matter of course, possible positions in rear had long since been reconnoitred. They were not particularly good ones, but the best that were available.
From earlier in the afternoon the Sappers had been at work on all the bridges crossing the canal, laying mines ready to blow them up in front of a possible successful enemy advance. By no means a pleasant task this, for the men were working under heavy fire practically all the time. But the Sappers are another of those corps of the Service which are well used to the kicks without the ha'pence, and nothing comes amiss to them. There is no regiment in the Army whose work merits recognition more than the R.E.; there is no regiment more surprised and pleased at receiving it.
As the dusk draws on the enemy fire has slackened a little, and the men in their trenches are here and there able to snatch mouthfuls of any food they happen to have handy. Most of them have not tasted anything since early morning, and they have been fighting hard all day. But there is no thought of rest.
The darkening night becomes red day as the glare of burning houses and buildings everywhere mounts to heaven in great shafts of light. It is such a picture as only a Rembrandt could give us on canvas.
The men sit or crouch wearily in their burrows, rifles always ready, heads sunk forward over the butts. Now and again there is a momentary stir as a doctor or stretcher-bearers scramble through the debris to get at the wounded. The fantastic, twisted shapes of the dead are reverently composed and laid down on the ground. The belongings of them are carefully collected, with the little metal identity disc. So far as possible these will reach the wife, mother, or sweetheart at home.
Perhaps those evening hours of the first day's fighting were the most terrible the men were ever to know. The tension had very slightly relaxed, and the brain began once again something of its functions. They began to feel things. No one ever gets accustomed to being under the fire of modern warfare, and this was the first day of it. The horror of everything began to crush the senses. Soon physical and mental action became purely mechanical; men ceased to feel, but moved, fired a rifle, fed themselves, with the grotesque jerks of children's toys. But this was not yet. Now they were conscious, if but a little.
One man, a bugler in a county regiment, little more than a child in years, went raving mad as he staggered across a trench and fell, dragging with him a headless Thing which still kept watch with rifle against shoulder. His shrieks, as they pulled the two apart, ring even now in the ears. He died that night, simply from shock after the awful tension of the day.
Consciousness came to the men, yet with it came also amazing cheerfulness even in the midst of the horror. But it was the cheerfulness not of high spirits but of determination, and of pity. They had fought through the day against an enemy which, even to men who did not understand, was in overwhelming strength; and yet they had been able to hold their ground. It was the cheerfulness which, at a word from their officers, would have taken them straight at the enemy's throat.
And pity, if it is to be helpful and sincere, must have behind it a gaiety of heart. No man in the world is more tender to helpless or dumb creatures than the British soldier or sailor; no man more cheerful. And no man in the Force but felt his heart wrung by the infinite pathos of the folk of Mons and round it. History will never record how many soldiers lost their lives that day in succouring the people who had put such trust in their presence.