In the Firing Line: Stories of the War by Land and SeaAdcock, Arthur St. John
History
In the Firing Line: Stories of the War by Land and Sea
Adcock, Arthur St. John
World War, 1914-1918
The poor Argylls got pretty well hit, but never wavered a yard for all
their losses. The Scots Greys are doing great work at the front--in
fact they were the means of putting ten thousand Germans to their fate
on Sunday morning. I will never forget that day, as our regiment left
a town on the French frontier on Saturday morning at 3 o’clock and
marched till 3 a.m. on Sunday into a Belgian town. I was about to have
an hour in bed, at least a lie down in a shop, when I was wakened to
go on guard at the General’s headquarters, and while I was on guard a
Captain of the crack French cavalry came in with the official report of
the ten thousand Germans killed. The Scots Greys, early that morning,
had decoyed the Germans right in front of the machine guns of the
French, and they just mowed them down. There was no escape for them,
poor devils, but they deserve it the way they go on. You would be sorry
for the poor Belgian women having to leave their homes with young
children clinging to them. One sad case we came across on the roadside
was a woman just out of bed two days after giving birth to a child. The
child was torn from her breast, and her breast cut off that the infant
was sucking. Then the Germans bayoneted the child before the mother’s
eyes. We did the best we could for her, but she died about six hours
after telling us her hardships.
* * * * *
_Letter 17.--From Private Whitaker, of the Coldstream Guards:_
You thought it was a big crowd that streamed out of the Crystal Palace
when we went to see the Cup Final. Well, outside Compiègne it was
just as if that crowd came at us. You couldn’t miss them. Our bullets
ploughed into them, but still they came for us. I was well entrenched,
and my rifle got so hot I could hardly hold it. I was wondering if I
should have enough bullets, when a pal shouted, “Up, Guards, and at
’em!” The next second he was rolled over with a nasty knock on the
shoulder. He jumped up and hissed, “Let me get at them!” His language
was a bit stronger than that.
When we really did get the order to get at them we made no mistake, I
can tell you. They cringed at the bayonet, but those on our left wing
tried to get round us, and after racing as hard as we could for quite
five hundred yards we cut up nearly every man who did not run away.
You have read of the charge of the Light Brigade. It was nowt to our
cavalry chaps. I saw two of our fellows who were unhorsed stand back to
back and slash away with their swords, bringing down nine or ten of the
panic-stricken devils. Then they got hold of the stirrup-straps of a
horse without a rider, and got out of the melée. This kind of thing was
going on all day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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