the Dutch cook gave us, then we got the time on by turning our tents out, and were quite in clover when the British Consul supplied us with knives, forks, spoons, towels, overcoats and boots.
We spent the first morning washing and drying our socks, and wondering what was going to be done with us. We kept on wondering, but soon knew that we were not going to be detained in Holland, but were to be sent home. On the Friday we had definite news that we were to go back to England, and on the Saturday morning we left, and did the sixteen miles’ tramp again; but it was easier this time, because we were prepared for it. We stopped at a farm, and they gave us milk and food, cigars and cigarettes, and before entering a special train for Flushing, the Dutch gave us milk again, and cake, bread and apples.
From Flushing we came on to Sheerness, and then we went on leave—and here I am; but I go back in a day or two. I don’t know what will happen, for owing to the explosion the sight of my left eye has practically gone. Besides that, I seem to have been completely shattered in nerves, though I reckoned that I was one of those men who have no nerves—I have been a steeple-jack since I left the Navy, and just before I was called up I was cleaning the face of Big Ben.
It is when I wake in the middle of the night, as I often do, that the whole fearful thing comes back with such awful vividness, and I see again the dreadful sights that it is better to forget.
Yes, the Germans got three good hauls in the cruisers; but I don’t think they’ll have another chance like it.
CHAPTER XV
THE RUNAWAY RAIDERS
[“Practically the whole fast cruiser force of the German Navy, including some great ships vital to their fleet and utterly irreplaceable, has been risked for the passing pleasure of killing as many English people as possible, irrespective of sex, age or condition, in the limited time available. Whatever feats of arms the German Navy may hereafter perform, the stigma of the baby-killers of Scarborough will brand its officers and men while sailors sail the seas.” So wrote the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Winston S. Churchill) on December 20th, 1914, in reference to the German raid on Scarborough, Whitby, and the Hartlepools on December 16th. In that cowardly bombardment of unprotected places, the Huns killed more than a hundred men, women, and children in the Hartlepools alone, and altogether the casualties numbered more than six hundred. This story is based on the narrative of Sapper W. Hall, R.E., one of the few English soldiers who have been under an enemy’s fire on English soil. Sapper Hall was badly wounded.]