Before the fighting began, and while it was going on, a good many of the inhabitants got into a panic and fled to Boulogne and Calais; but the French troops held out gamely, and on the Tuesday a fearful lot of execution was done amongst the masses of Germans by the French artillery fire. Neither the German guns nor the infantry could make a stand against this onslaught, and at this time the German losses were particularly heavy, hundreds of men falling together. At the end of that part of the battle the Germans for the time being were completely routed, and they were driven back a good dozen miles.
The Durhams suffered greatly in the fighting, and the good old West Yorkshires, who had seen a lot of hard work with us, had been badly cut up too. Some splendid help was given by the little Gurkhas, who had joined the British; but unfortunately I was not able to see much of what they did, because soon after they appeared with their famous knives I got my wound.
Some of the most exciting and dangerous work was done at night, when we tried to get at the Germans with the bayonet and rout them out of their trenches and positions. We had to do everything so quietly—creep out of the forts, creep along the ground, and creep up to the enemy as near as we could get, and sometimes that was not very close, because of such things as barbed wire entanglements.
These entanglements were particularly horrible, because they were so hard to overcome and tore the flesh and clothing. At first we had a pretty good way of destroying them, and that was by putting the muzzles of our rifles on the wire and blowing it away; but there were two serious drawbacks to that trick—one was that it was a waste of ammunition, and the other was that the noise of the firing gave us away, and let the Germans loose on us with guns and rifles.
We soon got too canny to go on with that practice, and just before I was wounded and sent home a very ingenious arrangement had been fixed to the muzzle of the rifle for wire-cutting—a pair of shears which you could work with a swivel from near the trigger, so that instead of putting the muzzle of the rifle against the wire, you could cut it by using the pliers.
It was in one of these night affairs that I was nearly finished as a soldier. I was ordered to join a reconnoitring party. We got clear of the fort, and made our way over the country for about a mile. We were then in a field which had been harvested and harrowed, so that it was pretty hard ground to go over. In spite of it all we were getting on very nicely when the Germans got wind of our movements and opened a terrible fire with rifles and maxims.
We lost a lot of men, and where a man fell there he had to lie, dead or living.
Suddenly I fell plump on the ground, and found that I could not get up again, though I did my best to keep up with my chums. Then I felt an awful pain in my thigh and knew that I was hurt, but I must have been struck five minutes before I fell, by a bullet from a German rifle. It had gone clean through my right thigh. They told me afterwards that I had had a very narrow shave indeed; but a miss is as good as a mile.
I knew there was nothing for it but pluck and patience, so I made the best of things, and waited till the day broke and brought the battalion stretcher-bearers,