“I think England might get a very good lesson from the inhabitants of France and Belgium. All the way as we proceeded through that country all the inhabitants turned out and did all they could for us. They brought us coffee, bread and butter, cigarettes, and anything they could think of. The ladies even turned out balls of string in case the men might find them useful, and handkerchiefs. We advanced up through this country, and then had to retire through it. You can imagine our feelings going back through the same country that we had previously traversed. This did not make the slightest difference to the way we were treated by the inhabitants. They brought us coffee and other things as before. “Fugitives flying from their homes were eager to give us of the food which they were carrying back for their own consumption. What struck us the whole time was the thought, If this was England? What an awful thing it would be to have an invading army in England, and everything happening here that is now going on in France!” Captain Buchanan Dunlop also told two splendid little stories to show what pluck and fight our men have in them: “I was talking to an officer of my own regiment in town yesterday. He was also wounded, and he told me about a fight on Wednesday week when one of his men lying just in front of him under heavy shell fire, turned to him and said: ‘Sir, may I retire?’ ‘Why?’ asked the officer. ‘Sir,’ replied the man, ‘I have been hit three times.’” Here is the other little incident: “On the very first day we were holding a canal bank, and during the night we had orders to retire, having held off the enemy all day. We were to blow up the bridges. By some mishap a sergeant with ten men was left on the wrong side of that canal with the Germans about two hundred yards in front. We could hear the Germans talking. The next morning, when we called the roll, we expressed sorrow at thinking that this sergeant and his men must have been captured. But in the morning, when they found they were cut off, what did they do? They did not put up their hands, but blazed away at the Germans, with the result that the Germans fled and the sergeant and his men got away.” The following story shows how many sides there are to a modern battle. It was at Mons that a fight occurred for the possession of a canal bridge, and a handful of British soldiers held at bay the enemy, who were in force a hundred yards away. The odds were overwhelmingly against our soldiers, and the Germans were preparing to rush the bridge, when an engineer sergeant perceived that if the enemy succeeded our men would be cut off. Urging the men to concentrate their fire on one particular point, this cool, brave man proceeded to dynamite the bridge. But as time was short he could only employ a few inches of fuse. This meant that he went to certain death. Sure enough, he and the bridge blew up together, and as an eye-witness quaintly said, “Another Victoria Cross was saved.”