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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.