I rushed up to him and shouted, “What’s wrong?” “I’m hurt,” he said. “The gun has to be got away; but there’s nobody left to take it.” I looked all around, and saw that there were no English gunners left--there were only the Germans swarming up, 500 yards away and badly wanting to get at the gun. There was not a second to lose. “Come on,” I said, and with that I hoisted the trumpeter into the saddle of the near wheel horse, and clambering myself into the saddle of the lead horse we got the gun going and made a dash up the hill. There was only the one road, and this was so littered up and fenced about with wire entanglements [Illustration: [_To face p. 62._ “I HOISTED THE TRUMPETER INTO THE SADDLE.”] that we could not hope to escape by it. Our only chance was by dashing at the hill, and this we did--and a terrible business it was, because we were forced to gallop the gun over the dead bodies of our own men--mostly artillerymen, they were. Many of the poor chaps had crawled away from their battery and had died on the hillside or on the road. We carried on over the hill, and when the Germans saw what we were doing they rained shells and bullets on us. One or two of the horses were hit, and a bullet knocked my cap off and took a piece of skin from my head--just here. But that didn’t hurt me much, nor did another bullet which went through my coat. We carried on, and got over the hill, just driving straight ahead, for we couldn’t steer, not even to avoid the dead. I daresay the bullet that carried off my cap stunned me a bit, at any rate I didn’t remember very much after that, for the time being; all I know is that we galloped madly along, and dashed through two or three villages. There was no one in the first village; but in the second I saw an old lady sitting outside a house, with two buckets of water, from which soldiers were drinking. She was rocking to and fro, with her head between her hands, a pitiful sight. Shells were dropping all around and the place was a wreck. I carried on at full stretch for about ten miles, tearing along to get to the rear of the column. I don’t remember that I ever looked back; but I took it that the trumpeter was still in the saddle of the wheel horse. At last I caught up with the column; then I looked round for the trumpeter, but he was not there, and I did not know what had become of him. That was the first I knew of the fact that I had been driving the gun by myself. Willy-nilly I had become a sort of artilleryman, and from that time until the 28th I attached myself to the guns; but on that day I rejoined what was left of my old regiment. I had been in charge of twelve men, but when I inquired about them I found that only three were left--nine had been either killed or wounded, and the rest of the battalion had suffered in proportion. That gives some idea of the desperate nature of the fighting and the way in which the little British army suffered during the first three days after Mons.