We left our landing place for the front, on the Tuesday, and got there on Saturday night. The Germans had just reached Liège then, and we got into action on the Sunday morning. The first thing we did was to blow up a bridge to stop the Germans from crossing. Then we came into action behind a lot of houses attached to the main street. We were there about ten minutes, when the houses started to fall around us. The poor people were buried alive. I saw poor children getting knocked down by bursting shells.
The next move was to advance across where there was a Red Cross Hospital. They dropped shells from airships and fired on it until the place was burnt down to the ground. Then they got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on Tuesday night. We camped there until two o’clock next morning.
Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all got together and cleared the field for action.... (The letter mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the Germans were in the proportion of three to one.) ... We cut them down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps, and dropping like hail. The Colonel passed along the line, and said, “Stick it, boys.”
I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades dropping down—some getting their heads blown off, and others their legs and arms. I was fighting with my shirt off. A piece of shell went right through my shirt at the back and never touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between the wheels to stop bullets.
We were there all busy fighting when an airship came right over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the shells were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line and saw the German guns coming towards us. We turned our two centre guns on them, and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.
Just after that a shell burst right over our gun. That one got me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off; you see they got completely around us, I went about two miles, and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin’s Hospital. We were shelled out of there about two in the morning, and then taken in a train, and taken down to a plain near Rouen.
Next morning we were put in a ship for dear old England.
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Letter 45.—From a Corporal in the King’s Royal Rifles, now at Woolwich Hospital:
I was in three engagements, Mons, Landrecies, and Cambrai, but the worst of all was Mons. It was on Sunday, the 23rd of August, and I shall never forget the date. They were easily twenty-five to one, and we eventually had to retreat with just over a thousand casualties, but heavens, they must have had a jolly sight more. At Landrecies, where we arrived at 7.30, we thought we were going to have a night’s rest, though we were wet through and no change, but we hadn’t been there long before they (the Germans) started firing; they seemed to be in every place we went to. The only thing we heard then was, “turn out at once.” It was about 10.15 when we turned out, and the Colonel’s orders were that we had to take a bridge if every man was killed. (I thought that sounded a wee bit healthy.) I had my last drink out of a dirty glass of beer. I says, “good health Billy,” and off we went with bayonets fixed.