I was in the barn, which was crowded with wounded, till about one o’clock in the morning, then we were taken in Red Cross vans to another hospital about three miles away, and as we left the French people showed us all the kindness they could, giving us water, milk and food, in fact all they had. We crossed the pontoon bridge and were put into another barn which had been turned into a hospital, and we stayed there for the night. We left that place in the morning for La Fère, about twenty miles away. There were a great many motor waggons being used as ambulances, and they were all needed, because of the crowds of wounded. All of us who could walk had to do so, as all the vans and lorries were wanted for the bad cases. I could manage to walk for about a mile at a stretch, but I could not use my arms. When I had done a mile, I rested, then went on again, and so I got to the end of the journey, with a lot more who were just about able to do the same. We didn’t grumble, because we were thankful to be able to walk at all and not to be so badly wounded that we could not shift for ourselves. When we got to La Fère the hospital was so full that we were put straight into a hospital train, and I was in it for two days and nights, stopping at stations for brief halts. Again the French people were kindness itself and pressed food and drink on us. We got to Nantes, where my wound was dressed and we had supper, and then I had what seemed like a taste of heaven, for I was put into a proper bed. Yes, after sleeping for so many nights on the ground, anyhow and anywhere, often enough in mud and water, it was like getting into heaven itself to get into a bed. On the Saturday they put us on board a ship and took us round to Liverpool, a four days’ journey on the sea. First we went to Fazackerley, and then I was lucky enough to be sent on to Knowsley Hall, where Lady Derby, who has a son in France with the Grenadiers, had turned the state dining-room into a hospital ward. There were sixteen Guardsmen in the ward, with four trained nurses to look after us. Wasn’t that a contrast to the barns and flooded trenches! Now I’m back in London, feeling almost fit again, and soon I shall have to report myself.

I have only told you about the little bit I saw myself of the tremendous Battle of the Aisne. Considering the length of it and the fearful nature of the firing, it sometimes strikes me as a very strange thing that I should be alive at all; but stranger still that some men went through it all, right away from the beginning at Mons, and escaped without a scratch.

CHAPTER V
“THE MOST CRITICAL DAY OF ALL”

[In the first four months of the war nineteen Victoria Crosses were gazetted for valour in the field, and of these no fewer than five were awarded for the sanguinary fighting at Le Cateau on August 26th, 1914. In his despatch dealing with the retreat from Mons Sir John French described the 26th as “the most critical day of all.” It was during this crisis of the battle that Corporal Frederick William Holmes, of the 2nd Battalion The King’s Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry), “carried a wounded man out of the trenches under heavy fire and later assisted to drive a gun out of action by taking the place of a driver who had been wounded.” Corporal Holmes has not only won the Victoria Cross, but he has been also awarded the Médaille Militaire of the Legion of Honour of France. His story gives further proof of the wondrous courage and endurance of the gallant British Army in Belgium and in France.]

For seven years I was with the colours in the old 51st, which is now the Yorkshire Light Infantry, then I was drafted to the Reserve; but I was called back only a fortnight later, when the war broke out.

The regimental depôt is at Pontefract, in South Yorkshire, which some unkind people say is the last place that God started and never finished, and in August, having become a soldier again, after marrying and settling down to civil life in Dublin, I found myself in a region which was almost like the South Yorkshire coalfields. There were the same pit-heads and shale-heaps, so that you could almost think you were in England again—but how different from England’s calmness and security! It was around these pit-heads and shale-heaps that some of the fiercest fighting of the earlier days of the war took place.

We had left Dublin and reached Havre at midnight; we had been to the fortified town of Landrecies, where the Coldstreamers were to do such glorious things, and had got to Maroilles, where Sir Douglas Haig and the 1st Division became heavily engaged. We were at Maroilles, in billets, from the 18th to the 21st. Billets meant almost anything, and we lived and slept in all sorts of places as well as the trenches—but being in the open in summer was no hardship. The fields had been harvested and we often slept on the stacks of corn.

The people were really most kind; they gave us every mortal thing as we marched, beer, wine, cigarettes and anything else there was.

At five o’clock on the Saturday afternoon we were billeted in a brewery, where we stayed till Sunday noon, when, as we were having dinner, shells were bursting and beginning things for us. We were ordered to take up a position about two miles from Mons, and on that famous Sunday we went into action near a railway embankment.

People by this time know all about Mons, so I will only say that after that hard business we retired towards Le Cateau, after fighting all day on the 24th and all the following night. After that we took up a position on outpost and stayed on outpost all night, then, at about two in the morning, we dropped into some trenches that we had previously occupied.