Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

When we were on the march we had a great deal of exciting work to do in hunting Germans. Small bodies of them were everywhere, apart from the immense numbers of spies who were in the Lille district and elsewhere.

The French bagged a lot of spies and gave them short shrift. They hid in all sorts of queer places—some of them got into the tall mill chimneys—but they were routed out and shot.

We found a fair lot of Germans in houses and farms when we were on the march. We examined these places thoroughly. When we arrived at farmhouses and suchlike places, a non-commissioned officer, with a small party of men would make inquiries, often with the help of French cavalrymen who were with us and could speak English, and we always found that threats of fearful punishment to the womenfolk had been made by the Germans if they told us that any Germans had been seen about. But the women told us readily enough, especially when there happened to be any Germans in hiding—those who were too drunk to get away and had been left behind. It didn’t take long to make these fellows prisoners, and they rubbed their eyes a lot when they got sober and found that the British had bagged them—though I fancy that most of them were glad to be caught and out of the fighting.

We saw some dreadful sights in these farms and houses that we entered, and it was no uncommon thing for us to bury the women who had been done to death by these invaders who were worse than heathens. We had to carry out this sad work at night, to escape the German fire, for no matter what we were doing they went for us with rifles and machine-guns and anything else that came handy.

Time after time on the march we saw proof of the terrible way in which the French and Germans fought, and saw how bravely the French had defended their country and how freely they had given their lives to get something like even with the enemy.

The Frenchmen were naturally even more upset than the British soldiers were at many of the sights that met us, and in the streets along which we marched we often saw dead bodies of Frenchmen and Germans lying close together, where they had fallen after a desperate fight on the pavements or in the roadway. They had met and fought to the death, and it looked as if no quarter had been given. And with all this there had been a perfectly savage destruction of everything that the Germans could lay their hands on.

The Germans had thieved and killed wherever they had gone, led on in the work by their officers, and little supposing, I fancy, that the day of reckoning had come for them and that their brutal game was being spoiled. There is no doubt that they had been taught that they were going to have a walk over in France and were going to have a good time in Paris; but some of them were poor enough specimens when we caught them or they surrendered.

After the terrific battles of the Marne and the Aisne we were transferred rather quickly to La Bassée, which is not far from Lille, and then we had to take a share in defending Lille, in one of the big forts just outside the town.

The Germans had got up into that part of the country in very strong force, and they were making furious efforts to smash the forts and get hold of Lille, which had become a most important place for them.

Lille is a large manufacturing town and was very strongly defended by forts and in other ways. These big forts, about half-a-dozen in number, form a ring round the town and command all the countryside, or rather did, for they have been pretty badly hammered by this time; while the town itself is protected in other ways. Lille was also one of the big centres for French troops, but owing to the heavy drain caused by the immense numbers of Germans that had to be dealt with at the Aisne there were not a great many first-rate troops left, and a good deal of the defence had to fall on the territorials.