During the long retreat from Mons the Middlesex Regiment got into an awkward plight, and a bridge--the only one left to the Germans--had to be destroyed to protect them. This was done by a sergeant of the Engineers, but immediately afterwards his own head was blown away by a German shell. "The brave fellow certainly saved the position," writes one of the Middlesex men, "for if the Germans had got across that night I'm afraid there would have been very few of us left." Other daring incidents may be told briefly. One of the liveliest is that of seven men of the Worcesters, who were told they could "go for a stroll." While loitering along the road they encountered a party of Germans, and captured them all without firing a shot. "We just covered them with our rifles," writes Private Styles; "so simple!" Sir John French relates a similar exploit of an officer who, while proceeding along the road in charge of a number of led horses, received information that there were some of the enemy in the neighborhood. Upon seeing them he gave the order to charge, whereupon three German officers and 106 men surrendered! On another occasion a portion of a supply column was cut off by a detachment of German cavalry and the officer in charge was summoned to surrender. He refused, and starting his motors off at full speed dashed safely through. Hairbreadth escapes are related in hundreds of letters, and they have a dramatic quality that makes the ineffectual fires of imaginative fiction burn very low. Sergeant E.W. Turner, West Kents, writes to his sweetheart: "The bullet that wounded me at Mons went into one breast pocket and came out of the other, and in its course passed through your photo." Private G. Ryder vouches for this: "We were having what you might call a dainty afternoon tea in the trenches under shell fire. The mugs were passed round with the biscuits and the 'bully' as best they could by the mess orderlies, but it was hard work messing through without getting more than we wanted. My next-door neighbor, so to speak, got a shrapnel bullet in his tin, and another two doors off had his biscuit shot out of his hand." Lieutenant A.C. Johnstone, the Hants county cricketer, after escaping other bullets and shells which were dancing around him, was hit over the heart by a spent bullet, which on reaching hospital he found in his left-hand breast pocket. Private Plant, Manchester Regiment, had a cigarette shot out of his mouth, and a comrade got a bullet into his tin of bully beef. "It saves the trouble of opening it," was his facetious remark.