In a little village near to Soissons, where I got my wound, there was
a half-battalion of Frenchmen posted with some machine guns to hold a
position, and their instructions were that they were not to yield an
inch to the Germans no matter what happened. For two days and nights
they fought their corner against ten times their own number of Germans,
but on the third night the enemy concentrated all their spare guns on
the village, and followed that up with a ferocious attack from all
arms. The Frenchmen shot away till their arms ached, and their heads
burned, and their throats were parched with thirst, and they were
weak with hunger. They could not stop that ceaseless rush of Germans,
who had orders to take the village or die. Step by step the French
were forced back, and at last those left were driven into some farm
buildings, where they took shelter. These were set on fire after a
time, and the men, who would not surrender, had no other choice but to
rush out and be shot down as they came. They did that, and next day we
arrived to find the Germans in possession. We cleared them out after a
hard fight, however, and helped to make things square: _A Gunner of the
Royal Artillery_.
Hoist!
Quite the most awful thing I ever set eyes on was early one morning,
close to Soissons. The Germans had taken up a position of great
strategical value, and entrenched themselves so cleverly that nothing
on earth seemed to shift them. They had got to be shifted, however,
and, because we didn’t make any attempts to do it by direct attack,
they got a bit “chesty,” and fancied themselves quite secure. All the
while our engineers were feverishly at work night and day, carefully
burrowing their way through the ground to where the Germans were. One
morning everything was ready. We opened fire, and a feint was made
against the position. The Germans stood to arms behind their trenches,
and kept firing at us. We knew what was coming, and didn’t press too
closely, but just at the appointed time there was a terrible roar in
front, and a great big cloud of earth, stones, and the mangled limbs
of men and horses shot up into the sky. The mine which our mud-larks
had been preparing for so long had been sprung at last, and the German
defenders of the trenches saw for themselves that it is not always the
open foe that is to be feared most. For yards around that position the
sight was a sickening one. Many of the defenders were torn limb from
limb, and the cries of those who remained alive were awful. I never
saw anything to equal it, except on one occasion when I was in a pit
explosion in the North: _A Corporal of the Coldstream Guards_.
“One Red Burial Blent”
The Germans are getting up to all the tricks of the trade so far as
making themselves secure against infantry or shell fire is concerned.
At first they didn’t seem to mind what happened, and were always on the
move just to walk over us, but when they found that it took two to make
a bargain in the walking-over line they began to get more cautious, and
now they get into holes in the ground that would make you think you had
gone out rabbit-hunting if it weren’t for the size of the game when
you catch them. Their trenches are mighty deep, and you can’t always
say rightly what’s in them. There was a chap of the Warwicks who went
peeping into one of these holes the other day, and before he knew what
to think he found himself looking down the muzzle of a German rifle.
He got out of the way with only a little nick in the arm, but he might
have lost his life. They had the dickens of a job to ferret that German
out of his place, but they did get him out, though it was only to put
him in again, as he wouldn’t surrender, and his pit came in handy for a
grave: _Gunner Hughes, of the Royal Field Artillery_.