CAPTAIN GRENFELL AND THE CHARGE OF THE LANCERS
It was at Mons in Belgium that the British soldiers first met the Germans. They were outnumbered by three to one; and they were therefore forced to fall back till fresh troops could be brought up to their assistance.
But they put up a glorious fight as they fell slowly back to a better position for making an advance; and the story of Mons and afterwards is so full of accounts of brave deeds that it is not easy to choose from among them.
The name of Captain Grenfell, however, stands out boldly on the roll of honour; and the story of his winning of the Victoria Cross is one of the finest in the history of the British Army.
At half-past ten one morning, the Second British Cavalry Brigade received a welcome order. They were to “charge for the guns” as the Light Brigade had been ordered to do at Balaklava in the Crimean War. The order was received with the greatest glee, for the troopers had waited for three days listening to the roar of the guns but taking no part in the great fight.
The men were the 9th Lancers, 18th Hussars, and 4th Dragoons. On they rode, singing, shouting, cheering; but they had not ridden far before some of the riders dropped from their saddles while their horses galloped away. The rest set their teeth, gripped their lances more tightly and urged on their horses until the thunder of the iron-shod hoofs seemed to drown that of the German guns.
All at once, a merciless fire broke out from a number of machine-guns which had been cleverly hidden on their flank, about 150 yards away. The withering fire swept their close-set ranks and men and horses fell in scores; but there was no faltering among the rest. Onward they rode, careless of the ceaseless hail of bullets and of the shells which now burst round them from the heavy guns ahead.
At last they reached the German battery, and what happened there is thus described by a German soldier:—
“We were outside Mons in open country,” he said, “with a clump of hills before us, when a troop of howling, yelling men with lances came racing round a hill and then straight for us. Your artillery and your infantry, yes, they are like ourselves and we can fight them, but these lancers;—ach!