People have heard and read a lot about the fighting at Ypres and Messines, and it is of this part of the battle that I am going to talk, because it was at these places that the 5th Dragoon Guards shared in a great deal of furious fighting.
We had had a long inning at the Aisne, then our brigade moved on to the Ypres region, which we reached after being fourteen days in the saddle. We made a short break at Amiens, where it was thought that we might have to help the French; but before long reinforcements arrived for them and we went on our road to the north, approaching Ypres as the advanced guard of a brigade.
It had been hard going on the march, and there was plenty of excitement with it, even before we got into the real fight for the coast. There were prowling Uhlans everywhere, and nothing would have pleased us better than to get at them in a thundering charge; but they didn’t give us the chance, they are not keen on that sort of thing, and kept in scattered bodies. But at one point quite a little surprise had been prepared for us by about three hundred Uhlans.
We were marching along when we discovered that these Uhlans had taken up a position commanding a road, and they had planted a Maxim, so that they could give us a warm welcome. They soon discovered that we were not going to be caught napping. Instead of keeping to the road we were promptly ordered to leave it and to take to a field running alongside. We made for the Uhlans as fast as we could go, but they did not stop to finish the welcome; they vanished, and I was unable to see the end of them; but it seems that they were completely surrounded and gathered in by some of our infantry.
[To face p. 172.
BRITISH CAVALRY AT THE FRONT.
This was the sort of small affair that was constantly happening, but it was a trifle compared with the real big fighting around Ypres. The cannonade was terrific, and the everlasting firing made it seem as though nothing existed on earth but the thundering of big guns and the screeching and bursting of shells all around.