Many of the famous deeds of antiquity have been curiously paralleled in the war. For instance, one of the ancient feats that everybody mentions occasionally was how the brave Horatius held the bridge across the Tiber with two companions against the whole Etruscan army.
Now we find again and again that a bridge has been the scene of deeds of conspicuous heroism in this war. The British were defending a river bank and bridge against a fierce German attack. The crew of a British Maxim gun had all been killed. Then Angus MacLeod, of the Gordon Highlanders, rose from cover, seized the Maxim gun and all alone carried it, under fire, to the far side of the bridge, where he played it on the advancing Germans.
He is credited with having killed sixty Germans. Finally he fell dead and thirty bullets were counted in his body. The delay enabled the British to rally and repel their opponents.
An extraordinary act of heroism was reported of an unnamed French soldier during the disastrous retreat of the French from the Belgian frontier and the Meuse River early in the war.
This man had been taken prisoner with some companions. The Germans, according to the report, drove their prisoners before them when attempting to cross a strongly defended bridge, to make the French think it was a party of their own men returning. As the French prisoners stepped on the bridge, one of them, a big and strong-voiced man, yelled:
"Fire, nom de Dieu, or you will be wiped out."
His own act made his death certain. He fell riddled with bullets from both sides.
Lieutenant Leach and Sergeant Hogan of the British Army each received the Victoria Cross for an extraordinarily daring and ingenious action. The two men killed two Germans, took sixteen unwounded prisoners and twenty wounded men. Leach and Hogan with ten men crawled unobserved to a section of trench that had been captured by the Germans earlier in the day. Leach and Hogan dropped into the trench unnoticed and the ten men lay in wait to shoot any Germans who showed themselves.
A trench is built in zigzags so that there is only a straight section of about twenty yards along which an enemy could shoot. The Germans in the first section were taken by surprise and all killed or wounded. Then the two men hurried on to the next turning. As they walked Hogan put his cap on his rifle and held it above the trench to show their men outside where they were.
Lieutenant Leach poked his automatic revolver round the corner of the trench and began shooting at the Germans from cover. The German soldiers with their big clumsy rifles could not hit the deadly hand that was the only object to aim at. While the Lieutenant was shooting, Hogan watched over the top of the trench to shoot any German who tried to get out or attack them in the rear. Thus all the men in each section were killed, wounded or captured.