“But they were brave,” said the major. “The Germans aren’t always so bad. Five officers from my regiment were missing one time, and we never even expected to find their bodies. But when we drove the Germans back we found a grave on which was marked: ‘Here lie five brave English officers.’ We identified them all, and their bodies were taken back to England.”
We followed another sidewalk and came to a huge mound covered with yellow flowers, which had been planted by the English soldiers. On a neatly made cross at the head of the mound an English soldier had patiently printed the words: “Here lie seventeen German soldiers.”
There wasn’t an English grave in Ploegsteert Wood that was better tended or more heavily beflowered than these mounds of fallen Germans.—Mr. W. G. Shepherd, Special Correspondent of the United Press.
Daily News, June 1, 1915.
If all the episodes of this action were recorded they would make a long as well as a grim narrative revealing the ghastliness, the wild passion, the self-sacrifice, and the cool cunning of such an hour or two of modern war.
Some of the tales of the men would have been incredible except that I heard them from soldiers who told the truth that lives on the lips of men who have seen very close into the face of death.
It is, for instance, difficult to believe—yet true—that amidst all this tumult and terror of noise one German prisoner was taken as he sat very calmly in his dug-out reading a book of religious meditations through gold-rimmed spectacles. Perhaps it was the man—I only guess—in whose pocket-book was found a letter to his wife saying, “The position here is hellish, and death is certain. I only pray that it may come soon.”
Daily Telegraph, August 16, 1915.
From Belfort in September came the report: “A German aviator this morning flew over Belfort, dropping a wreath on the spot where Pégoud was killed. The following inscription was placed on the wreath: ‘To Pégoud, who dies a hero. (Signed) His Adversary.’”
The following is from the Daily News of October 9, 1915: