A soldier wrote: "There was a big, awkward, gawky lad of the Camerons who took a fancy to a Scotch collie that had followed us about a lot, and one day the dog got left behind when we were falling back. The big lad was terribly upset and went back to look for it. He found it, and was trudging along with it in his arms, making forced marches to overtake us, when he fell in with a party of Uhlans on the prowl. He and his dog fought their best, but they hadn't a dog's chance between them, and both were killed."
"A man of the 'Glosters' noticed a horse that had been struck with a shell and was in great pain, and was neighing piteously for water. There was none about, and with the Germans rapidly closing in it was as much as any man's life was worth to stay another minute. The brave chap knew that as well as anyone, but he wanted to make the poor animal comfortable before he cleared off, so he hunted around until he found water. We had to clear out, and didn't know what had happened to him until next day when we retook the position, and found the Gloucester lad and horse both dead."
The highest courage comes from forgetting self and caring for the welfare of others.
This was told by a corporal of an Irish regiment. "We were in a place near Rheims and a Britisher dashed out from a farmhouse on the right and ran towards us. The Germans fired and he fell dead. We learned that he had been captured the previous day by a party of German cavalry, and had been held a prisoner at the farm, where the Germans were in ambush for us. He saw their game, and, though he knew that if he made the slightest sound they would kill him, he decided to make a dash to warn us of what was in store."
It was not enough for our men to show courage on land and sea; they now do so also in the air. At one time it was thought that the Germans excelled in this new kind of warfare, and that their Kaiser was "the Prince of the power of the air." Now the French and British have successfully disputed this ascendancy.
The men of the Royal Flying Corps are not "afraid of that which is high." "Fired at constantly both by friend and foe," Sir John French writes, "and not hesitating to fly in every kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout."
John Baker, Royal Flying Corps, told the following in a letter home: "While flying over Boulogne at a height of 3,000 feet something went wrong with the machine, and the engine stopped. The officer said, 'Baker, our time has come. Be brave, and die like a man. Good-bye,' and shook hands with me. The next I remembered was that I was in a barn."
Another new opportunity for courage is given by the work of the motor-cycle despatch-rider. There is in it adventure, danger, hardship and every other element of romance. The despatch-rider has to take his machine over rough fields and roads made dangerous by shell holes. He has often experiences as bad as the one which Lance-Corporal Davies, of the Welsh Fusiliers, thus describes: "I had to accompany one of the sergeants in carrying a despatch across the battlefield under fire. We had not gone far before the sergeant was shot dead. I took the despatch from his keeping with all haste and made at top speed for the staff officers for whom it was intended. As I delivered the despatch I dropped into a dead faint from exhaustion, and when I came round I found myself in the field hospital."
The despatch-rider has to pass sentries who shoot at sight, and sometimes he has to go through even the lines of the enemy.