We reached Mons on Saturday afternoon, August 22, the day before the battle. We at once commenced to entrench, and were still engaged on this work when the Germans fired their first shell, which wrecked a house about twenty yards away. Then we got ready for the fight. We made loopholes in a wall near the house, and remained there for fifteen hours under a heavy fire of shrapnel. The Germans came across the valley in front of us in thousands, but their rifle fire was absolutely rotten, and such damage as they did was caused by the big guns which covered their advance. Numerically the Germans were far superior to us, and as soon as one lot was shot down another took its place. We retired from Mons about four o’clock on Monday morning to a little village on the borders of France. We kept up a rearguard action all the way, and it was in this that I was wounded. A shell dropped close to me, and some fragments penetrated my left leg. I was thrown to the ground, and for a time lay unconscious. When I recovered I found my rifle and ammunition were missing, having, I suppose, been taken by the Germans, who evidently thought I was dead. The lance-corporal eventually managed to reach St. Quentin. A private of the same regiment told a thrilling story of the battle:— It was Sunday, August 23 (he said), that we were at Mons, billeted in a farmyard, and we were having a sing-song and watching people home from church. The Belgian ladies were very kind-hearted, and we were given their prayer-books as souvenirs, and they also went to the shops and bought us cigarettes, which were most acceptable to the troops. At about 12.30 an orderly had gone down to draw dinners, when an aeroplane appeared overhead, throwing out some black powder. After this shrapnel burst overhead, acquainting us of the fact that the Germans were in the vicinity.