In a little village near to Soissons, where I got my wound, there was a half-battalion of Frenchmen posted with some machine guns to hold a position, and their instructions were that they were not to yield an inch to the Germans no matter what happened. For two days and nights they fought their corner against ten times their own number of Germans, but on the third night the enemy concentrated all their spare guns on the village, and followed that up with a ferocious attack from all arms. The Frenchmen shot away till their arms ached, and their heads burned, and their throats were parched with thirst, and they were weak with hunger. They could not stop that ceaseless rush of Germans, who had orders to take the village or die. Step by step the French were forced back, and at last those left were driven into some farm buildings, where they took shelter. These were set on fire after a time, and the men, who would not surrender, had no other choice but to rush out and be shot down as they came. They did that, and next day we arrived to find the Germans in possession. We cleared them out after a hard fight, however, and helped to make things square: A Gunner of the Royal Artillery.
Hoist!
Quite the most awful thing I ever set eyes on was early one morning, close to Soissons. The Germans had taken up a position of great strategical value, and entrenched themselves so cleverly that nothing on earth seemed to shift them. They had got to be shifted, however, and, because we didn’t make any attempts to do it by direct attack, they got a bit “chesty,” and fancied themselves quite secure. All the while our engineers were feverishly at work night and day, carefully burrowing their way through the ground to where the Germans were. One morning everything was ready. We opened fire, and a feint was made against the position. The Germans stood to arms behind their trenches, and kept firing at us. We knew what was coming, and didn’t press too closely, but just at the appointed time there was a terrible roar in front, and a great big cloud of earth, stones, and the mangled limbs of men and horses shot up into the sky. The mine which our mud-larks had been preparing for so long had been sprung at last, and the German defenders of the trenches saw for themselves that it is not always the open foe that is to be feared most. For yards around that position the sight was a sickening one. Many of the defenders were torn limb from limb, and the cries of those who remained alive were awful. I never saw anything to equal it, except on one occasion when I was in a pit explosion in the North: A Corporal of the Coldstream Guards.
“One Red Burial Blent”
The Germans are getting up to all the tricks of the trade so far as making themselves secure against infantry or shell fire is concerned. At first they didn’t seem to mind what happened, and were always on the move just to walk over us, but when they found that it took two to make a bargain in the walking-over line they began to get more cautious, and now they get into holes in the ground that would make you think you had gone out rabbit-hunting if it weren’t for the size of the game when you catch them. Their trenches are mighty deep, and you can’t always say rightly what’s in them. There was a chap of the Warwicks who went peeping into one of these holes the other day, and before he knew what to think he found himself looking down the muzzle of a German rifle. He got out of the way with only a little nick in the arm, but he might have lost his life. They had the dickens of a job to ferret that German out of his place, but they did get him out, though it was only to put him in again, as he wouldn’t surrender, and his pit came in handy for a grave: Gunner Hughes, of the Royal Field Artillery.
[XIII. GALLANT DEEDS]
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,