With the Scottish Regiments at the Front — John Shaqi
With the Scottish Regiments at the FrontVivian, Evelyn Charles
History
With the Scottish Regiments at the Front
Vivian, Evelyn Charles
Great Britain. Army -- Scottish regiments; World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Scotland
Thus, discursively, a wounded Cameron man told of the incidentals of the
fighting in France--the earlier days. Then comes a fairly detailed
account of the battle of the Marne, in which the first three days,
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, are described as "pretty much
preliminary," but on Tuesday the brigade of which the Camerons formed a
part went out to meet the enemy, and drove them back, capturing about
six hundred prisoners and eight guns. The ground was sodden with rain,
and the Camerons lay out in the harvest fields taking cover behind the
standing sheaves of corn, while the German artillery rained out shells
on them, not even stopping when their own infantry advanced on the
British troops. "We got it very rough, and a man beside me--one of our
battalion--went out to help an officer who was badly wounded, but just
as he got up to the officer he dropped. Our fellows were falling all
round, and at about ten in the morning I got my dose. During the day the
fighting round where I was lying fell off a bit, but I had to lay on the
ground until dark, when another chap, who saw I couldn't move, came over
to make me a bed of straw and get me comfortable. But before he could
get my bed made a bullet got him through the spine, and he tumbled over
in a heap--stone dead. I was lucky to get out of it, for the Germans
were firing on our ambulance men. They had snipers lying among our
wounded, and that night, when stretcher bearers came out to carry in the
wounded officer, three of the bearers were shot. It was Wednesday
morning before I was picked up by a picket of the Coldstream Guards."
At the beginning of the battle of the Aisne, the Camerons were brought
up to advance in skirmishing order under shell fire, when one man was
wounded by shell fire, and fell back behind a haystack. Some other
wounded also sought the shelter of the haystack, whereupon the Germans
immediately began to shell it, and the wounded men sought other shelter,
to fall in with a convoy of thirty German prisoners. Finally they found
the transport column, and were taken back to a hospital established in a
village in rear of the firing line--but this hospital was already full
up. No less than thirty-two shells were aimed directly at this hospital,
though it had a Red Cross flag flying over it all the time. This
hospital was cleared, and two hours after the patients had been removed
it was utterly destroyed by shell fire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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