The aeroplanes were employed with great skill by the Germans, before opening fire, to take observations for the range of their artillery, and the precise locality of our soldiers. It was, moreover, evident that they possessed an intimate knowledge of the country where the fighting took place. Owing to the enormous number of the German reserves, when one regiment was vanquished another was always ready to take its place, and so they advanced like an avalanche. The slaughter was awful: the British suffered terribly, but the German losses were appalling. It is stated that in some places the dead of the enemy was piled up to a height of six feet, and that to pass over them the Germans made bridges of the corpses of their own men. Here, as elsewhere, the Germans resorted to cowardly brutality. Their cavalry are said to have driven women and children in front of them in the streets, to protect them from the British fire. But the enemy lost as well as gained reputations: Sir Philip Chetwode, the cavalry leader, after fighting without ceasing for ten days, with odds of five to one against them, said, “We have been through the Uhlans like brown paper.” Innumerable cases of personal heroism have been recalled. That of Captain Grenfell must not be omitted. Although suffering from two severe wounds, he participated in the rescue of two British guns, after shrapnel shell had burst over them and struck the artillerymen who were serving them. This act enabled troopers of the 9th Lancers under his direction to get away. According to the statement of the Paris correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, gathered from the reports of Belgian and British fugitives, between Saturday and Monday, August 22–24, the British Expeditionary Force bore the brunt of six furious attacks made by six distinct German columns, which were all repulsed successfully, though with considerable loss. The Allies raised a veritable hecatomb of German corpses near Mons. At different points on the battlefield, the bodies of Germans were heaped up so that in the course of their furious charge the Turcos experienced great difficulty in coming into contact with the enemy. We can picture our men fighting doggedly on, in the din and carnage of the engagement, during those hot August days and calm clear nights, with the never-ceasing crack of rifle-shots, the boom of the artillery fire and the scream of the shells, while the enemy came on with relentless and unending regularity. CHAPTER III FIGHTING AT CHARLEROI IN THE FRENCH LINES—A RAILWAY OFFICIAL’S ADVENTURE—A ZOUAVE OFFICER’S IMPRESSIONS—FRENCH ARTILLERY —HEAVY GERMAN CASUALTIES—-THE FALL OF NAMUR—A BELGIAN SOLDIER’S TRIBUTE. Shifting the scene for a time to the operations on the French lines, we obtain a view of the fighting in the neighbourhood of Charleroi on the eve of the great battle on the Belgian frontier, from the description of a correspondent to a Paris paper, and communicated by Mr. A. Beaumont:—