We opened a rapid fire with our Maxims and rifles; we let them have it properly, but no sooner did we have one lot down than up came another lot, and they sent their cavalry to charge us, but we were there with our bayonets, and we emptied our magazines on them. Their men and horses were in a confused heap. There were a lot of wounded horses we had to shoot to end their misery.
We had several charges with their infantry, too. We find they don't like the bayonets. Their rifle shooting is rotten; I don't believe they could hit a haystack at 100 yards.
We find their field artillery very good; we don't like their shrapnel; but I noticed that some did not burst; if one shell that came over me had burst. I should have been blown to atoms. I thanked the Lord it did not. I also heard our men singing that famous song, "Get Out and Get Under." I know that for an hour in our trench it would make any one keep under, what with their shells and machine guns. Many poor fellows went to their death like heroes.
The writer of the following letter, too, was telling of Mons. To friends far away, at peaceful Barton-on-Humber, he wrote:
Just a line to tell you I have returned from the front, and I can tell you we have had a very trying time of it. I must also say I am very lucky to be here. We were fighting from Sunday, 23d, to Wednesday evening, on nothing to eat or drink—only the drop of water in our bottles which we carried.
No one knows—only those that have seen us could credit such a sight, and if I live for years may I never see such a sight again. I can tell you it is not very nice to see your chum next to you with half his head blown off. The horrible sights I shall never forget. There seemed nothing else only certain death staring us in the face all the time. I cannot tell you all on paper. We must, however, look on the bright side, for it is no good doing any other.
There are thousands of these Germans, and they simply throw themselves at us. It is no joke fighting seven or eight to one. I can tell you we have lessened them a little, but there are millions more yet to finish.
Of the battle that reddened the foam of the North Sea during the last days of August many a seaman recorded his impressions. And what curious things stuck in the memories of the weary, powder-stained survivors! "The funny thing which you should have seen," wrote Midshipman Hartley to his parents, "was all the stokers grubbing around after the action looking for bits of shell." And a seaman on H.M.S. Hearty wrote:
Two cooks were in the galley of the Arethusa, just having their rum, when a shell killed one and blew the other's arm off. A funny thing, they've got a clock hanging up; it smashed the glass and one hand, but the blooming thing's still going.
There is fine realism in Seaman Gunner Brown's letter to the parents who waited for tidings in their cottage on the Isle of Wight: