We spent two days and two nights in that wood, with the Germans absolutely round us: they were so near, in fact, that we could hear every word they said. Leaving the wood by night, we pushed on to where we heard the English were: at Cambrai; but when we got there we found they had left the day before. We then hid in a wine cellar, and the Germans came and burnt down the house above us. We, however, escaped through a ventilator. We crawled out through the kitchen garden and hid in some wheat sheaves for the rest of that day, and at night we moved south, where we heard firing going on. We averaged every night about twenty-five kilometres. We always marched by compass, and always went absolutely plumb straight across country. Each day we hid in hen-houses, outbuildings, or wherever we could, and marched by night. We found the inhabitants extremely nice. Wherever possible they gave us food—if the Germans had not taken it all. Later we secured a motor-car, and proceeded towards St. Pol, but when we had proceeded about half-way we found a German sentry outside a house. We raced past him, and he fired a shot or two, but missed us, and we got safely through the village. Boulogne was eventually reached without further adventure. One of the most graphic descriptions of the five days’ fighting at Mons is contained in a letter from a wounded Gordon Highlander. He relates that on Sunday, August 23, his regiment rose at 4 a.m., and marching out 1,100 strong took up ground on the extreme left flank of the British force and made good trenches, which apparently was the reason that they escaped with comparatively few casualties. “Later in the day a hellish tornado of shell swept over us, and with this introduction to war we received our baptism of fire. We were lining the Mons road, and immediately in our front and to our rear were woods. In the rear wood was stationed a battery of R.F.A.” The German artillery he spoke of as wonderful, and most of those do who have had experience of it. The first shot generally found them, as if the ranges had been carefully taken beforehand. But the British gunners were better, and they hammered and battered the Germans all the day long. They were at least three to our one, and our artillery could not be in fifty places at once, so we just had to stick it. The German infantry are bad skirmishers and rotten shots, and they were simply mowed down in batches by our chaps. They came in companies of, I should say, 150 men in file five deep, and we simply rained bullets at them the live-long day. At about five p.m. the Germans in the left front of us retired, and we saw no more of them.