Told in gallant deeds : $b A child's history of the warLowndes, Marie Belloc
History
Told in gallant deeds : $b A child's history of the war
Lowndes, Marie Belloc
World War, 1914-1918 -- Juvenile literature
“The gunners had all been killed by shrapnel, and there were the guns
with no one to look after them, and a good chance that the Germans might
get them. The horses were safe enough, but there was no one to harness
them. Captain Grenfell stepped out. ‘We’ve got to get those guns back,’
he said. ‘Who’s going to volunteer for the job?’ He had a couple of
dozen of us before he had finished speaking. Since our chaps have seen
him in the firing line, they would go anywhere with him.
“Well, we went out. There were bullets flying all round us and shrapnel
bursting all over the place, but Captain Grenfell was as cool as if he
was on parade. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They can’t hit us. Come
along!’ We got to the guns all right, hitched up the horses, and brought
them back, and only three of our chaps were hit. It’s a wonder the whole
lot of us were not wiped out.”
It was later in that same day that this gallant Captain Grenfell was
wounded. He got a bullet in the thigh, and a couple of his fingers were
hurt. His men brought him back from the firing line and sent for an
ambulance to take him away, but while they were waiting for the
ambulance a motor-car came along. “That’s exactly what I want,” said the
Captain. “What’s the use of an ambulance to me? Take me back to the
firing line.” And he got into the motor-car and went back, leaving the
doctors to make what they liked of it!
Here is another story, of which the hero this time is a cavalry
sergeant. This man had been badly wounded three times, but was still
going on fighting. Suddenly he heard a corporal shouting to be taken out
of the line. Turning round, he bound up his comrade’s wounds, set him on
his own horse and sent him back out of the way. Then, regardless of his
own condition, he limped along to his regiment, and started fighting
again.
And now for a very pathetic little incident.
In the middle of the battle, in a beautiful cornfield from which the men
fighting could see all over the country, one of the drivers of a battery
was badly wounded. He asked to see the colours before he died. His
officer told him that the guns were _his_ colours, and he answered:
“Yes, that is true. Tell the drivers to keep their eyes on their guns,
for if we lose our guns we lose our colours.”
These brave drivers have the strongest feeling of affection and loyalty
for their guns.
On one occasion, also at Mons, two drivers brought a gun out of action,
the shells bursting all round them. They had noticed that the gunners
had all been killed, so they walked their horses down to save the gun.
One driver held the horses under a fearful fire while the other
“limbered up.” The gun was rushed safely back, neither men nor horses
being hit. Their comrades, watching them from the trenches, thought it
quite impossible for them to escape death, for shot and shell were
ploughing the ground up all round them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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