With two other officers and twenty men he was sent by the Belgian
command to get information about the enemy. In a fight with a German
patrol he was wounded, but returned to headquarters with the desired
information. He is a great-grandson of Francis Scott Key.]
After the counter-attack had subsided, I was ordered to take my men and
join up with the rest of the battalion on our right. There we spent the
night in a trench. We must have been facing south. It was a miserable
night we passed, for we were all very cold and thirsty. We had to
keep digging. When morning broke it was very misty. We expected to be
relieved at two in the morning, but the relief did not come till noon.
Never shall I forget those hours of suspense. We were all hungry. The
only food we could get was German black bread, which we picked up all
over the place; also German tinned sausages and bully-beef. We had to
lift up some of the dead to get at these things. Some of them had water
bottles full of cold coffee, which we drank.
“We all craved a smoke. Fortunately, the German haversacks were pretty
well stocked with cigarettes and cigars. I got a handful of cigars off
a dead German, and smoked them all morning. Also a tin of cigarettes.
His chocolates also came in handy. Poor devil, he must have been a
cheery soul when living, for he had a photograph of himself in his
pocket, in a group with his wife and two children, and the picture
made him look a jolly old sport. And here he was dead, with both legs
missing! The trench (between ours and the wood) was stacked with
dead. It was full of débris—bombs, shovels, and what not—and torn
books, magazines, and newspapers. I came across a copy of Schiller’s
‘Wallenstein.’