The ablest pens writing of the Great War have paid tribute to this splendid deed which changed the course of its beginning. French's retreat from Mons has been a topic to inspire the highest eloquence of the patriotic historian and the most profound admiration of the militarist. Everything, from the point of the onlooker, has been said of it. And everything that has been said retires into the perspective of the academic, when one reads, in this volume, the words of a trained British soldier who experienced and survived it. For stark and simple strength, for realism of detail, for a complete picturization of the desperate and heroic resistance of the sacrificial army, this soldier's tale is, and will remain, unequalled and unique. This prefatory emphasis is not vain or extravagant. It need not fear the fact that there is but the turning of a page between promise and performance. Here is a writing which is _of_ the war, and therefore differs from all writings which can only be _about_ the war. It conveys to the reader an almost paralyzing sense of wonder at the steadfastness of Britain's military traditions, put to an unexampled test. It shows how marvellously well a soldier may learn his business in advance--when his business is to die. Concerning one of the most noteworthy accomplishments of the arms of Britain, there will survive in print no more compelling and convincing narrative than this, the utterance of one whose trade was fighting and not writing. THE BLACK WATCH THE BLACK WATCH CHAPTER ONE For more than two years now, I have been trying to forget those first months of the war. The months when the Black Watch and other regiments of the immortal "contemptible little army" marched into the unknown against the fiercest, most efficient military power the world, up to that time, had known; the months when hidden enemies struck swiftly mystifying blows with strange weapons, the more terrible because we did not understand them and had never imagined their power and numbers. For more than two years I have habitually sought to keep my mind upon other subjects, yet I can recall those days now in the minutest detail. I can hear the sudden thrum of the masked machine guns like giant partridges drumming; can hear the singing roar of the Prussian airplanes to which, in those days, because of the scarcity of British planes, there could be practically no answer; and I can live again the frightful nights when we made our stand upon the Marne, and, sneaking into German outpost trenches, slew the guards with jack-knives, thrusting gags into their mouths and cutting their throats to prevent outcry. Those were the days of picturesque and shifty fighting. There was movement, the rush of cannon from the rear, the charges of cavalry, the perils of scouting and patrolling. It was little like the slow trench warfare which followed.