By this time our ambulances were hard at work; but ambulance or no ambulance, the pitiless shelling went on, and I saw many instances of German brutality in this respect. The ambulance vehicles were crowded, and I saw one which had two wounded men standing on the back, because there was not room enough for them inside. Shells were bursting all around, and a piece struck one of the poor chaps and took part of his foot clean away. He instantly fell on to the road, and there he had to be left. I hope he got picked up by another ambulance, though I doubt it, for the shell-firing just then was heavy, and deliberately aimed at helpless ambulances by people who preach what they call culture!
We made the best of things during the evening and the night in the trenches. The next day things were reversed, for the Germans came on against us; but we kept up a furious fight, and simply mowed them down as they threw themselves upon us. We used to say, “Here comes another bunch of ’em!” and then we gave them the “mad minute.” We had suffered heavily on the 31st, and we were to pay a big bill again on this 1st of November, amongst our casualties being two of our senior officers.
The battalion was in the peculiar position of having no colonel at the head of it, our commanding officer being Major J. M. Traill. I should like to say now, by way of showing how heavily the Bedfords suffered, that in one of Sir John French’s despatches, published early in the year, seven officers were mentioned, and in the cases of six of them it had to be added that they had been killed in action. Major Traill and Major R. P. Stares were killed not far from me on the day I am telling of—and within two hours of each other.
We were lying in trenches, and the majors were in front of us, walking about, and particularly warning us to be careful and not expose ourselves. Their first thought seemed to be for us, and their last for themselves.
Just at that time there was some uncommonly deadly sniping going on, and any figure that was seen even for a fraction of time was a certain target. The sniper himself was a specially chosen German, and he had as a companion and look-out a smart chap with field-glasses, to sweep the countryside and report to the sniper anything promising that he saw in the way of a target. Working in pairs like this, the snipers were able to pick off the two majors as they walked up and down directing and encouraging us. They were shot, and, as far as we could tell, killed instantly. We felt their loss very greatly.
Major Stares had very much endeared himself to his men, and he was a great favourite in South Africa before the war began. We were all eager to get to the front, of course, and were constantly talking about what we should do, and wondering what would happen when we met the Germans. The major was never tired of explaining what we ought to do in tight and dangerous corners, and asking us what we should do. I have known him stop us in the street to ask us these questions, so keen and anxious was he for our welfare.
The second day of the fighting passed and the third came. Still we held on, but it became clear that we were too hopelessly outnumbered to hope for complete success at the time, and so we were forced to leave the trenches. Withdrawing again, we took up positions in farmhouses and woods and any other places that gave shelter. All the time there was a killing fire upon us, and it happened that entire bodies of men would be wiped out in a few moments. A party of the Warwicks got into a wood near us, and they had no sooner taken shelter than the German gunners got the range of them, shelled them, and killed nearly all of them.
There was not a regiment of the Glorious Seventh that had not suffered terribly in the advance during the three days’ fateful fighting. The Bedfords had lost, all told, about 600, and it was a mere skeleton of the battalion that formed up when the roll was called. But there was one pleasant surprise for me, and that was meeting again with Lance-Corporal Perry. We had lost sight of each other in the hand-to-hand fighting with the Prussian Guard, and met again when we were reorganised at an old château; and very thankful we were to compare notes, especially as each of us thought that the other was a dead man. There were a good many cases of soldiers turning up who were supposed to be either killed or wounded, or, what is worse, missing. In the inevitable disorder and confusion of such a battle they had got separated from their own regiments and had joined others; but they turned up in due course in their right places.
I had become a member of the grenade company of the battalion, which was something like going back to the early days of the Army, when the grenadier companies of the regiments flung their little bombs at the enemy. So did we, and grim work it was, hurling home-made bombs, which had the power of doing a great amount of mischief.
I was with the grenade company, behind a brick wall close to the trenches, and was sitting with several others round a fire which we had made in a biscuit-tin. We were quite a merry party, and had the dixie going to make some tea. There was another dixie on, with two or three nice chickens that our fellows had got hold of—perhaps they had seen them wandering about homeless and adopted them.