"My dear Parents,—Our corps has the task of holding the heights south of Cerny[129] in all circumstances till the 15th Corps on our left flank can grip the enemy's flank. We are fighting with English Guards, Highlanders, and Zouaves. The losses on both sides have been enormous. For the most part this is due to the too brilliant French artillery. The English are marvellously trained in making use of the ground. One never sees them, and yet one is constantly under fire. The French airmen perform wonderful feats. We cannot get rid of them. As soon as an airman has flown over us, ten minutes later we get their shrapnel fire on our position. We have little artillery in our corps. Without it we cannot get forward. Three days ago (14th September) our division took possession of these heights, dug itself in, etc. Two days ago, early in the morning, we were attacked by immensely superior English forces, and were turned out of our positions. The fellows took five guns from us. It was a tremendous hand-to-hand fight. How I escaped myself I am not clear. I then had to bring up supports on foot. My horse was wounded, and the others were too far in rear. Then came up the supports, and, with help of the artillery, drove back the fellows out of the position again. Our machine guns did excellent work. The English fell in heaps. In our battalion three Iron Crosses[130] have been awarded—one to the commanding officer, one to the captain, one to the surgeon. Let us hope that we shall be the lucky ones next time. During the first two days of the battle I had only one piece of bread and no water; spent the night in the rain, without my greatcoat. The rest of my kit was on the horses, which have been left miles behind with the baggage; which cannot come up into the battle, because as soon as you put your nose out from behind, the bullets whistle. The war is terrible. We are all hoping that the decisive battle will end the war, as our troops have already got round Paris.[131] If we first beat the English, the French resistance will soon be broken. Russia will be very quickly dealt with. Of this there is no doubt. We received splendid help from the Austrian heavy artillery at Maubeuge. They bombarded one of the forts in such a way that there was not thirty feet of parapet which did not show enormous craters made by shells. The armoured turrets were found upside down."
It was during the fighting of 14th September that Captain Mark Haggard, while leading the Welsh Regiment in the 3rd Brigade, met his death. Private Derry of his company thus tells the story:—"The Welsh were ordered to advance. When about twenty yards from the crest of a hill Captain Haggard ran forward to the top, saw the Germans, and shouted, 'Fix bayonets, boys; here they are!' We fixed, and were prepared to follow him anywhere; but we were checked by a storm of Maxim fire. We knew by the sound that we were up against a tremendous force. There was only one game to play now—bluff them into the belief that we were as strong as they were. So we were ordered rapid firing, which gives an enemy the impression that the firing force is strong. We popped away like this for three hours, never moving an inch from our position. Just near the men was lying our brave captain, mortally wounded. He had charged on to the enemy's Maxims, and had been hit as he was laying out the enemy with the butt of an empty rifle, laughing as he did it. As the shells burst over us he would occasionally open his eyes, so full of pain, and call out, but in a very weak voice, 'Stick it, Welsh! stick it, Welsh!' So our brave lads stuck it until our artillery got in action, and put 'paid' to the score. Captain Haggard died that evening, his last words being, 'Stick it, Welsh!' He died as he had lived—an officer and a gentleman."
When his men were forced to retire to a new position, they had to leave him behind; but his soldier-servant, Lance-Corporal Fuller, ran out from the new trenches and, under a heavy fire, carried him into his own lines. For this deed, as you will hear later, the gallant soldier received the Victoria Cross.
Gunner Thomas Joy, of the Royal Field Artillery, thus describes a night attack on the Aisne:—
"'It's a fine night for the Germans' is what we say out there when it's so dark that you can hardly see your finger before you; and it was just on such a night that I got nicked while serving my gun. The enemy had been quiet all day, for a wonder, and we were just taking a well-earned rest after the hot time we had been having. Just about two in the morning, when the faintest traces of light were to be seen creeping across the sky, there was a heavy rattle of rifle fire on the hill where our advanced men were posted, and soon the whole camp was alive with noise and bustle as the men sprang to arms.
"We always sleep beside our guns, so as to be ready for anything, and in five minutes we were at our posts waiting for information about the range. That came later, and then we began plugging away for all we were worth. We caught sight of a mass of Germans swarming up a slope on the right, to take cover in a wood there; but they didn't know what we knew. We dropped a few shells into them, just to liven things up a bit and keep them from thinking too much about the Fatherland; but we had to be careful, because some of our own chaps were posted in that wood.
"The Germans kept rushing along gaily, and there was not the slightest sound from the wood where our men were securely posted behind the felled trees. Now the German searchlights began to play all around, and the air was lit up with bursting shells. We could see the Germans get nearer and nearer to the wood.