[CHAPTER IV]
Boys of the Bulldog Breed
A bugler only sixteen years of age was, on returning from the war, being taken to the Royal Herbert Hospital at Woolwich. One of the soldiers said to the people who were looking on, "He is a little hero, and deserves a dozen medals. He did not leave off sounding his bugle until his left arm was blown off with a shell and he had four bullet wounds in him."
Another boy of the bulldog breed, who is a trumpeter, did this heroic deed. A British battery had lost all its horses and all its men except a lieutenant and a trumpeter. By one of the guns lay the sergeant-major, wounded in the leg and shoulder, and the lad decided that he would make an attempt to take him out of the line of fire. His officer tried to dissuade him, declaring that it was sheer madness, in face of the awful shell fire that was pouring like rain all round that spot. The lad, however, was determined, and, getting hold of a spare horse from the rear, galloped off to where the wounded sergeant-major lay, picked him up, placed him across his saddle, and brought him safely to the hospital.
The great complaint our cavalry had against that of the enemy was that they would not stand and have a respectable charge against them.
A party of Royal Marines were going by train from Antwerp to Ostend. At 10 o'clock at night the train was stopped and the Marines were fired at by Germans from all directions. The officer in command was asked to surrender. He replied, "Royal Marines never surrender." The no-surrender boys fought their way through, though they lost many of their number.
Great was the pain that an order to retreat gave to other boys of the bulldog breed. While the British were gaining a series of great successes, the French were being defeated on the right. They were unable to hold the Germans. The British were ordered to fall back in order that they might not be enveloped by the Germans and completely cut off. When the order came, the men became almost rebellious. "Stalwart members of the Scottish and Irish regiments wept."
The men, however, as it proved, got even more opportunity of showing courage in the retreat that they did not, at the time, understand. "My story," says the New York World correspondent, "principally concerns the bulldog-like resistance of the British troops against the constant ferocious attacks by the Germans holding the centre of the far-flung line, while the French troops were engaged in pushing back the right flank of the Germans. Official statements conveyed but an incomplete idea of the tremendous undertaking of the British and French troops."