Great Britain -- Defenses; Imaginary wars and battles
=COUNT VON SCHONBURG-WALDENBERG, Lieutenant-General.=
NORWICH, _September 7th_, 1910.
"I had betaken myself at once to the round tower of the church, next the
Stone Bridge, from which I had an excellent view both east and north.
The first thing that attracted my eye was the myriad flashings of rifle
fire in the dimness of the breaking day. They reached in a continuous
line of coruscations from Boreham Hall, opposite my right hand, to the
knoll by Little Waltham, a distance of three or four miles, I should
say. The enemy were driving in all our outlying and advanced troops by
sheer weight of numbers. Presently the heavy batteries at Danbury began
pitching shell over in the direction of the firing, but as the German
line still advanced, it had not apparently any very great effect. The
next thing that happened was a determined attack on the village of Howe
Street made from the direction of Hyde Hall. This is about two miles
north of Little Waltham. In spite of our incessant fire, the Germans had
contrived to mass a tremendous number of guns and howitzers on and
behind the knoll they captured last night, and there was any quantity
more on the ridge above Hyde Hall. All these terrible weapons
concentrated their fire for a few moments on the blackened ruins of Howe
Street. Not a mouse could have lived there. The little place was simply
pulverised.
"Our guns at Pleshy Mount and Rolphy Green, aided by a number of field
batteries, in vain endeavoured to make head against them. They were
outnumbered by six to one. Under cover of this tornado of iron and
fire, the enemy pushed several battalions over the river, making use of
the ruins of the many bridges about there which had been hastily
destroyed, and which they repaired with planks and other materials they
brought along with them. They lost a large number of men in the process,
but they persevered, and by ten o'clock were in complete possession of
Howe Street, Langley's Park, and Great Waltham, and moving in fighting
formation against Pleshy Mount and Rolphy Green, their guns covering
their advance with a perfectly awful discharge of shrapnel. Our cannon
on the ridge at Partridge Green took the attackers in flank, and for a
time checked their advance, but, drawing upon themselves the attention
of the German artillery, on the south end of the knoll, were all but
silenced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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