The Indians were greatly pleased at the result of the action, and constantly asked their officers when they were going to have another fight. Many stories are told of their prowess. One Gurkha made his way into a house, and single-handed captured five Germans, whom he marched off at the point of his kukri. It was curious to see the Indians returning with articles of German equipment. When they held them up for inspection they called out, "Souvenir! souvenir[29]!"
Bengal Lancers returning from "Port Arthur" after the capture of Neuve Chapelle.
(From the picture by F. Matania. By permission of The Sphere.)
Notice the "souvenirs" which they are carrying on their lances.
Canadian infantry were not specially engaged in the fighting at Neuve Chapelle, but the Canadian artillery played an active part in the bombardment which preceded the British advance, and the infantry were ready during the battle to go forward at a moment's notice. A Winnipeg "boy" wrote home as follows: "At 5.30 on the morning of Wednesday (the first day of the Neuve Chapelle attack) our officer told us to hurry over our breakfast, as a heavy fire was to be opened by our side, and the enemy, in replying, would probably drop a few rounds in our vicinity. We had just started to line up in the road outside when 'whop!' came a shell, which burst a few yards ahead. 'Double for the trenches!' was the order, and away we went. The trenches were only about one hundred and fifty yards away, yet the Germans had our position to a foot, and sixteen rounds of shrapnel burst literally in our midst. Had they burst overhead, as they should have done, it's a very fair bet that nearly every man of us would have 'gone west;' but only one man was hit, a fellow a short distance back of me. . . . We had to stay in the trenches until evening that day, and all next day."
A wounded German officer said that the suddenness of our bombardment was "like the burst of a great storm, instantly filling all the space with countless crashes of thunder, flame, smoke, and lead. Six of your great black howitzer shells," said he, "fell within fifty yards of a trench on my right, and so completely was our trench blown asunder that when the earth fell back it buried hundreds with it. When the storm abated I crawled out, only to be bayoneted in the shoulder by, as I learned, a Territorial, and while I was lying there thousands of British pursuing our retreating battalion passed by me. But I lifted my sound arm, and they spared me—why, I do not know. It seemed to take hours for the British soldiers to pass me, and then I saw groups of my own regiment, unguarded and without guns, many slightly wounded, walking back to the British base. Such faces I did not think could be worn by human beings; they were orange with lyddite smoke. The men were palsied with what they had been through, and were too dazed to answer my call."
The part played by the 2nd Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment and the Irish Rifles in the advance towards the line of the little river is thus described:—