Very early in this war a light infantry regiment, closely engaged by the enemy, saw over twenty men who in turn held the standard cut down; a fresh soldier immediately grasped the coveted trophy and held it aloft, while his comrades ringed him round with dead. So it went on until supports arrived, and the standard and the little remnant of gallant men were saved.
I must tell you what a London lady did to cheer and encourage the young men who were eagerly joining the colours. She lives in a street where recruits are constantly passing, and she felt sad to see how weary they often looked, and what little notice passers-by took of them. She therefore bought a large Union Jack, and whenever a contingent of recruits marched by she hurried to her front door and waved the flag, thus showing them that there was at least one person there who wished to do them a little honour and felt gratitude for what they were doing for England. In due course she was rewarded, for an officer, before then quite unknown to her, called specially to tell her how much his men had been cheered and touched by her action.
Some time before the British airmen’s daring raid into Germany, two French flyers, Lieutenant Cesari and Corporal Prudhomme, performed a magnificent exploit over Metz.
They left Verdun under orders to reconnoitre and destroy if possible the Zeppelin sheds at Metz. The two airmen flew over the line of forts, the lieutenant at about 8000 feet up, and the corporal at 6500. In the midst of a cloud of bursting projectiles they kept on their way, but a little before they arrived above the parade ground the lieutenant’s motor suddenly stopped!
Determined not to descend without having accomplished the task assigned to him, he proceeded to volplane, and it was in planing that he launched his bomb at the shed. A little later, much to his surprise, for he had given himself up for lost, his motor re-started. Corporal Prudhomme also dropped a bomb from his machine. On their return journey hundreds of shells were fired at them, but they reached headquarters safe and sound.
A French aviator is reported to have brought down from the skies a German rifle bullet which he had caught in his hand! He was flying at a height of about 7000 feet, when he suddenly became aware of a small black object close to his head. He thought it was an insect of some kind, and was enough of an entomologist to realise that a flying insect at such a height was a curiosity. So he stretched out his hand and grasped what to his amazement proved to be a bullet! It was evidently a rifle bullet that had been fired almost vertically, and had there reached its utmost elevation.
It has been said that this great war has been waged in a very pitiless manner, but there have been, as we have seen, merciful exceptions.
One of these was the reconciliation on the battlefield between a French and a German soldier, who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town of Blâmont. They were there all through the cold, dark night, with only the dead about them. When dawn came they began to talk to one another, and the Frenchman gave his water-bottle to the German. The German sipped a little, and then kissed the hand of the man who had been his enemy.
“There will be no war in Heaven,” he said.
Boys, as we know, have played a splendid part in the war. One of the bravest French lads, whose name I am sorry I cannot tell you, saved the town in which he lived from total destruction, and from French shells.