We can form some idea of the terrible nature of the battle from the British losses. These included six of the larger ships and eight destroyers, as well as a large number of brave British sailors. But the German losses were very much heavier, both in ships and men.
One of the British ships engaged in the fight was H.M.S. Chester, the crew of which included the boy John Travers Cornwell, whose age was about 16½ years. He belonged to a party whose duty it was to work one of the guns, and during the first part of the fighting he received a very bad wound.
But he stayed at his post in a most exposed position, and went quietly on with his work though the men of the gun crew fell, one by one, dead or dying around him. He was hurt again and again, but he did not give up. He stood waiting for orders with the speaking tube at his ears, until the fight was over, when he was taken tenderly below.
His captain afterwards wrote of him to his mother:—“The wounds which resulted in his death were received in the first few minutes of the action. He remained steady at his most exposed post at the gun, waiting for orders.... He felt that he might be needed—as indeed he might have been—so he stayed there, standing and waiting under heavy fire, with just his own brave heart and God’s help to support him.”
After the battle the boy was taken to a hospital at Grimsby. He was attended with the greatest care, but his wounds were too severe to be cured. Cornwell had indeed been “faithful unto death.”
Before he died some one asked him what he and his mates were doing during that terrible time. “Oh,” said the dying boy, “we were just carrying on.”
HEROES OF LOOS
Let us begin with a heroine if only to remind ourselves that it was not only the British who showed the most wonderful heroism on the Western Front, but the French also, not excluding the French women and girls. When the British re-took the French town of Loos in the autumn of 1915, they found a ready helper in a French girl of seventeen years named Emilienne Moreau, who had lived there during the German occupation.
She shared the work which women did so nobly during the Great War, that of nursing the wounded. This was done under the most trying conditions, for the fighting was still going on and all was din and confusion around her. In spite of the heavy bombardment, some of the people of Loos had stayed behind in their shattered houses; and one of the first duties of our troops on entering the town was to carry terrified women and children into places of cover.