Yet another who took part in this terrific battle, wrote: “It looked as if we were going to be snowed under! The mass of men who came on was an avalanche, and everyone of us must have been trodden to death, if not killed by shells or bullets, had not our infantry charged into them on the left wing, not 500 yards from the trench I was in.”
A non-commissioned officer also shows how our side was outnumbered: “No regiment ever fought harder than we did, and no regiment has ever had better officers; they went shoulder to shoulder with their men. But you cannot expect impossibilities, no matter how brave the boys are, when one is fighting forces twenty to thirty times as strong.”
Everyone of the great battles in the world’s history has some outstanding heroic action to its credit. The heroes of Mons were British cavalry, for the 9th Lancers made there a charge every whit as gallant and glorious as the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.
A German battery of ten guns had been posted inside a wood, each gun having been skilfully made to look like a small haystack, which caused the British to approach them unsuspectingly. When the guns opened fire, terrible havoc was caused in our ranks, and it seemed impossible to silence them.
It was then that the 9th Lancers made their splendid charge.
The whole regiment rode straight at the German battery, cut down all the gunners, and put the guns out of action. As was the case in the Charge of the Light Brigade they lost more men as they rode back than on their way in.
I think the best account of this wonderful cavalry charge was written by one who was wounded in it. “We were flying at one another as hard as the horses could go. It was a charge such as you see in a picture, every man hoping he would not get his knees crushed by the fellows on each side of him.” Does not that remind you of Sir Walter Scott’s splendid lines?
“On came the whirlwind—like the last
But fiercest sweep of tempest blast;
On came the whirlwind—steel gleams broke