Like lightning through the rolling smoke,
The war was waked anew.”
There were at least two Frenchmen in this historic charge. The Vicomte de Vauvineux, a French cavalry officer, who rode with the brigade as interpreter, was killed instantly—a gallant officer whose death many in England mourned. Captain Letourey, the French master at Blundell’s School in Devon, rode by the side of de Vauvineux, but escaped death as by a miracle. His horse was shot under him, but he caught another, riderless, and rode off unscathed.
While the bulk of the brigade swerved to the right, riding for a hundred yards across the face of the machine guns, a few rode desperately on, bearing charmed lives. But only for a few yards. The trap, baited by the desultory fire of the artillery, was complete. Wire entanglements were buried in the grass thirty yards in front of the guns. Riding full tilt into these, the few who kept their line to the guns fell, and were made prisoners.
Of the 9th Lancers, not more than forty gathered that night in a village hard by. Others came in next day, and finally some two hundred and twenty in all mustered out of the entire regiment.
A trooper of the 9th Lancers in writing home mentioned a fact which I thought very touching, and the admission of which showed that he was really a brave man. He said that when going into action he found himself crying out “Mother!” “Mother!” and then suddenly he felt courage, as he strikingly put it, “loom” up in him.
I think, without boasting, we may say that it is characteristic of both armies that whereas the German soldiers are played into action by a band, the British march into action singing. During the present campaign they seem to have preferred “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” and it is on record that an Irish regiment sang that stirring old song “God save Ireland.” The Manchester Regiment sing “Killaloe,” the Rifle Brigade are fond of that fine old ballad “Colonel Coote Manningham’s a very good man.” The Fusiliers have their own song, “Fighting with the Royal Fusiliers.”
We must not allow ourselves to forget that other regiments of our cavalry were also engaged in this great battle, among them the 18th Hussars and the 4th Dragoons, who performed noble feats of valour and suffered severely.
Another historic “scrap” was that between a regiment of Irish infantry and three regiments of German cavalry splendidly horsed, equipped, and armed. The Irishmen, who had been joking and smoking, rose up to meet the oncoming rush of horsemen, and one who was there said they looked like a bristling bulwark of giants, holding weapons of steel in steel grips.
For a few minutes there was an awful chaos of horses, soldiers grey and soldiers yellow, glittering lances and bayonets, the automatic spit of machine guns, the flashes of musketry. Amidst it all the men in khaki stood steadfast. Grimly and without budging they threw back, at the bayonet’s point, in utter demoralisation, the cavalry of the Kaiser. While they fought they sang “God save Ireland,” and “Whistle to me, said I.”