Three of our guns had been disabled, two waggons blown up, and many wheels blown off the waggons.
Some strange things had happened between Mons and Compiègne, and now that the duel had ended we had a chance of recollecting them and counting up the cost to us. Corporal Wheeler Carnham was knocked down while trying to stop a runaway ammunition waggon, and one of the wheels went over his legs. He managed to get on his feet again, but he had no sooner done so than he was struck on the legs by a piece of shell. At Compiègne two gunners were blown to pieces and could not be identified. Driver Laws had both legs broken by a waggon which turned over at Mons, and afterwards the waggon was blown up, and he went with it. Shoeing-Smith Heath was standing alongside me at Compiègne when the firing began. I told him to keep his head down, but he didn’t do so—and lost it. The farrier was badly wounded, and the quartermaster-sergeant was knocked down and run over by an ammunition waggon. Gunner Huddle, a signaller, was looking through his glasses to try to find out where the shells were coming from, when he was struck on the head by a piece of bursting shell.
Our commanding officer, Major the Hon. W. D. Sclater-Booth, was standing behind the battery, dismounted, as we all were, observing the fall of the shells, when he was hit by a splinter from a bursting shell and severely wounded. He was removed, and we did not see him again until we were on the way to the base. As far as I remember, he was taken off by one of the cavalry officers from the Bays.
Lieutenant Giffard, our right section officer, was injured early in the fight by a shell which shattered his left knee, and he was taken and placed with the rest of the wounded behind the haystack, where in a very short time they were literally piled up. As soon as the officers and men fell we did the best we could for them; but all we could do was just simply to drag them out of the danger of the bursting shells. Luckily, this particular haystack escaped fairly well, but very soon after the fight began nearly every haystack in the camp was blazing fiercely, set on fire by the German shells.
The first thing to be done after the fight was to bury our dead and collect our wounded, and in this sorrowful task we were helped by the Middlesex Regiment—the old “Die-Hards”—who have done so splendidly and suffered so heavily in this war. They, like I Battery, had come up, and we were very glad to see them. Some of our gallant wounded were beyond help, because of the shrapnel fire.
We buried our dead on the field where they had fallen, amidst the ruins of the battery they had fought to save, and with the fire and smoke still rising from the ruined buildings and the burning haystacks.
Another thing we did was to go round and shoot the poor horses that were hopelessly hurt—and a sorry task it was. One waggon we went to had five horses killed—only one horse was left out of the six which had been hooked in to march away in the mist of the morning; so we shot him and put him out of his misery. We had to shoot about twenty horses; but the rest were already dead, mostly blown to pieces and scattered over the field—a dreadful sight.
When we had buried the dead, collected our wounded, and destroyed our helpless horses, the guns of our battery were limbered up on to sound waggon limbers, and a pair of horses were borrowed from each sub-section of I Battery to take them away. Everything else was left behind—waggons, accoutrements, clothing, caps, and so on, and the battery was taken to a little village about four miles from Compiègne, where we tried to snatch a bit of rest; but we had no chance of getting it, owing to the harassing pursuit of big bodies of Uhlans.
From that time, until we reached the base, we wandered about as best we could, and managed to live on what we could get, which was not much. We were in a pretty sorry state, most of us without caps or jackets, and we obtained food from other units that we passed on the road.
We were marching, dismounted, day and night, till we reached the rail-head, where I was transferred to the base and sent home. The sergeant-major and Osborne came home at the same time, and the sergeant-major is now a commissioned officer. So is Sergeant Nelson.