We had very little rest after the fight I have just described. We were getting down to the real business of war. It was fighting, and not the incessant retreating, which had been sapping the life out of us for weeks. You must remember, also, the weight that each man carried during all those long wearisome retreats. Each of us had his heavily plaited kilt; his pack containing great coat, flannel shirt, two pairs of socks, waterproof sheet, extra shoes, and towel; his canteen, rifle, entrenching tool, bayonet, and ammunition—the whole totalling ninety pounds weight.
Immediately after the fight, in shallow, narrow trenches, we began to bury our dead. Before the work was finished, a detachment of Uhlans fired on us, but one of our companies drove them across a rivulet and over the crest of the next ridge.
One of our pipers—Dougall McLeod was his name—had lost his chum in the fight. McLeod was a sentimental sort of chap, with little heart for the work of killing. He was sitting on the ground fastening together a couple of strips of wood to make a little cross for his chum’s grave—or rather his chum’s share of the one long grave. The tears were trickling down his grimy, bloody cheeks, and he wasn’t ashamed of them, nor of the furrows they cut in the caked dirt. It was just before he finished his work that the Uhlans opened fire. McLeod threw the loose pieces of the cross to the ground, and sprang to his place in the firing line. I had never seen the passion of hate in his eyes before. All that the Germans had made him suffer had never aroused him, but now that they interrupted him in the work of making a homely mark for his friend’s grave, he was fired by the will to kill. I was only a few paces from him in the firing line, and, with the tears still streaming down his face, I could hear him mutter every time his rifle crashed:
“Damn you! You will, will you?”
We again took to the road. All that day we marched under occasional shell fire. Along the sides of the roads, we passed the wrecks of scores of German combat wagons and supply trains. Sometimes there was a field piece amid the débris. Toward evening we heard terrific firing on our right, but we were not called to enter the engagement. Later we learned that a French division had been pretty badly cut up in running the boches out of a strong position.
Their wounded passed us on the road. You cannot imagine a more pitiful or a more noble sight. Limping along, supported by their comrades, came scores of men, whose every step was costing them agony but who smiled at us as we cheered them. Straggling down the road, as we swung along, came groups of wounded, each supporting the other as best he could. In one case in particular, a man who had been badly maimed and was using his rifle as a crutch, was also supported by a comrade who had been blinded. If there had ever been doubt in our minds as to the mettle of our allies, it was dispelled now, as the lame and the blind hour after hour filed past us.
We billeted that night at a place, the name of which sounded like Villers. I remember that a detachment of French were there before us, and a peasant pointed out to me a row of trees where they had hung fifteen Germans captured there, because, when the Uhlans had taken the town fifteen of them had brutally assaulted and outraged a farmer’s wife and his daughter, twelve years of age. The ropes were still dangling from the trees.
Volunteers were asked for, to go down and get the mail. Practically every one offered his services. To get mail from home gave the same sensation as scoring a victory, and we were all eager to do our bit. This was about 10.30 P.M. and the rain was coming down in torrents. About two miles behind us lay the mail strewn around the road. The ambulance carrying it had been struck by a shell. Our volunteer mail carriers gathered the letters up, and, needless to say, there was much excitement among us on their arrival. Nothing else was thought of for the moment except the news from home.
The next few days were uneventful. Toward evening on the thirteenth of September, I was scouting on our left flank. The German heavy guns had been keeping up a steady searching fire all day, but little damage had been done.
I had got so accustomed to the roar of the explosions that they did not bother me very much. After a while a man gets so used to the sound of a shrieking shell in the air that he can tell by instinct when one is coming his way in time to throw himself flat on the ground. I had not yet reached this stage of proficiency. A shell did come my way. How close it came I will never know, because all of a sudden I felt as though my head were bursting. I seemed to be tumbling end over end and being torn to pieces. My ear drums rang and pained excruciatingly. I thought to myself “I am dying,” and I wondered how I kept feeling a sort of consciousness although I must be already torn to bits.