"Men fell in droves, but Captain Bradbury and the men available strove to unlimber the guns, and in five minutes three were ready for action. One was instantly disabled by a German shell, and Driver Osborne was thrice wounded. A shrapnel bullet deeply grazed his cheek, another caught his shoulder, a third grazed his ribs and inflicted a nasty chest wound. The second gun was shattered in ten minutes, and then for another hour and a quarter one gun fought the German battery. It was an inferno. The screaming dying horses, the shattered groaning men, the shells in hundreds digging holes of four to five feet deep, and shrapnel bullets by thousands searching the ground made it a Gehenna.
"Men fell fast. The officers were killed or wounded, but the one gun fought on. Driver Osborne, thrice wounded, fetched the ammunition from fifty yards away amidst showers of shrapnel. One shell dropped within six feet, but did not burst; another hit a gun muzzle, but the fragments missed him. He was running behind a shattered gun for ammunition when a shell hit the wheel, and the concussion of the broken wheel knocked his knee up, and he could go no more. An officer started for ammunition instead and was instantly killed.
"Osborne holds Captain Bradbury in high honour. 'He was a hero and a gentleman.' His courage, promptitude, and resource inspired his men. One by one the German guns were hit, shattered, silenced, and their gunners fell, under the terrible accuracy of that one British gun. Ten guns ceased fire, and the Germans fled from the other. The Middlesex Regiment of infantry arrived at this point and found three men wounded, covered with blood from horses and men, but working their one gun with their ebbing strength.
"Dashing forward, they captured the German guns, brought out the English battery and rescued the wounded men. The three men, with their fallen comrades, had saved the battery, destroyed the German attack, saved the village beyond, and secured the English rear."
For this splendid service Driver Osborne was rewarded with the Médaille Militaire for distinguished conduct. This is the French V.C. It is equivalent to the Legion of Honour in France, and carries with it a pension of a hundred francs a year.
Driver Osborne was also recommended for the British V.C., but it does not yet appear to have been given.
The first Wesleyan soldier in this war to receive the V.C. was Bandsman Thomas Edward Rendle, 1st Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. The reward was, according to the official notification, conferred—
"For conspicuous bravery on November 20, near Wulverghem, when he attended to the wounded under very heavy shell and rifle fire, and rescued men from the trenches in which they had been buried by the blowing in of the parapets by the fire of the enemy's howitzers."
Still another story of Christian heroism, the hero of this being a member of the Salvation Army. I quote from the War Cry of October 17, 1914.
"Jumping into a carriage of an already moving train the other day (writes a War Cry representative) I was seized by a soldier in war-stained khaki, who gave me a tight hand-grip and said, 'Good luck to you! God bless you and your people!'