“The whole scene changed all of a sudden. The whole family embraced us, almost choked us. Food and wine and dainties were supplied at once, and we had a most glorious time.”
August 26, a Wednesday, saw perhaps the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting which had yet taken place. All day our gallant men fought at Landrécies against fearful odds. There two companies of the Coldstream Guards held 3000 Germans at bay for four hours. Lieut. Percy Wyndham (a direct descendant of the great Irish rebel-hero, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and of his wife, the lovely Frenchwoman who lives in romance under the name of Pamela) stood up and fired a hundred rounds from his revolver so that his men could form up quietly behind him. He then shouted out to them: “Fall in, and die like Coldstreams!” This gallant young soldier fell in action a week later at Soissons.
Listen to the heroic end of yet another officer of the Coldstreams. Lieutenant Allan William George Campbell lost his life through a successful attempt to rescue a comrade who was in a worse plight than himself. He had already been wounded, when he noticed Captain Tollemache fall. Together with Colonel Ponsonby he went out and carried Captain Tollemache over a mile under fire to a position of safety; but while he was doing so, he was again terribly wounded, and he only lived a few days.
We get a touching glimpse of Lieut. G. C. Wynn, killed in action at Landrécies, in a letter from one of Mr. Wynn’s men, written to the young officer’s father:
“The last day he was alive we had got a cup of tea in the trenches, and we asked him to have one. He said, ‘No, drink it yourselves, you are in want of it’; and then with a smile he added, ‘We have to hold the trenches to-day.’ At Mons we had been fighting all day, and someone brought a sack of pears and two loaves of bread. Lieut. Wynn accepted only one pear and a very little bread. We noticed this. I had a small bottle of pickles in my haversack and asked him to have some. But it was the usual answer, ‘You require them yourself!’ He died doing his duty like the officer and gentleman he was.”
In a letter written from hospital after this engagement, a corporal told of how he had been saved from a lingering death on the field:
“They blazed at us from 350 yards, and as fast as we shot one lot down, another came up. At last I got a bit of shell in the calf of my leg. We retired all together. My captain put me on his horse and led it for miles, until we got to a train.”
St. Quentin, with which will ever be associated the name of a terrible battle, one of the three rearguard actions in which our army fought with such splendid bravery and against such fearful odds, is a beautiful old town. It was part of the dowry of Mary Queen of Scots, and all through her long, sad captivity, she still received money from the faithful city.
Long before this great war, St. Quentin saw terrific fighting. Spaniards, British, Germans and Flemings there defeated the French, who were led by the brave Coligny and the famous Constable Montmorency. That old Battle of St. Quentin was fought on St. Lawrence’s Day, and it was because he believed that God had helped him to win this victory that the sinister King of Spain, Philip II, built the Escurial, a marvellous Spanish palace formed in the shape of a gridiron.
The great charge of the Black Watch took place at St. Quentin. The men had marched close on eighty miles before word ran through the ranks they were going into action. Unmeasured was their joy! At once they put themselves in good skirmishing order, and, under cover of the guns, got closer and closer to the enemy. Not till they were within a hundred yards of the German lines did they receive the longed for command.