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
About 120 English soldiers who had been wounded in and around Mons
arrived in Birmingham on September 1st, and were removed to the new
university buildings at Bournbrook, where facilities have been provided
for dealing with over 1,000 patients. The contingent was the first
batch to arrive. Though terribly maimed, and looking broken and tired,
the men were cheerful. About twenty had to be carried, but the majority
of them were able to walk with assistance.
In the course of conversation with a _Daily Telegraph_ reporter a
number of the men spoke of the terrible character of the fighting. The
Germans, one man said, outnumbered us by 100 to one. As we knocked
them down, they simply filled up their gaps and came on as before.
One of the Suffolk men stated that very few were injured by shot
wounds. Nearly all the mischief was done by shells. The Germans, he
said, fired six at a time, and if you missed one you got the others.
One poor fellow, whose head was so smothered in bandages that his
features could not be seen, remarked, “We could beat them with
bladder-sticks if it were not for the shells, which were appalling. The
effect could not be described.”
A private of the West Kent Regiment, who was through the Boer War, said
there was never anything like the fighting at Mons in South Africa.
That was a game of skittles by comparison.
They came at us, he said, in great masses. It was like shooting
rabbits, only as fast as you shot one lot down another lot took their
place. You couldn’t help hitting them. We had plenty of time to take
aim, and if we weren’t reaching the Bisley standard all the time, we
must have done a mighty lot of execution. As to their rifle fire, they
couldn’t hit a haystack.
A sergeant gunner of the Royal Field Artillery, who was wounded at
Tournai, owing to an injury to his jaw was unable to speak, but he
wrote on a pad:
I was on a flank with my gun and fired about sixty rounds in forty
minutes. We wanted support and could not get it. It was about 500
English trying to save a flank attack, against, honestly, I should
say, 10,000. As fast as you shot them down more came. But for their
aeroplanes they would be useless. I was firing for one hour at from
1,500 yards down to 700 yards, so you can tell what it was like.
IN HOSPITAL.
(4) _At London._
All the heroism that has been displayed by British troops in the
present war will never be known. A few individual cases may chance to
be heard of. Others will be known only to the Recording Angel. Two
instances of extraordinary bravery are mentioned by a couple of wounded
soldiers lying in the London Hospital in the course of a narrative of
their own adventures.
One of them, a splendid fellow of the Royal West Kent Regiment, told a
_Daily Telegraph_ reporter:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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