A smart young corporal accompanied me to reconnoitre, and we went too
far ahead, and were cut off in a part of the country thick with Uhlans.
As we rode in the direction of ---- two wounded men were limping
along, both with legs damaged, one from the Middlesex and the other
Lancashire Fusiliers, and so we took them up. The men were hungry and
tattered to shreds with fighting, but in fine spirits. We soon came
across a small village, and I found the curé a grand sportsman and full
of pluck and hospitality. He seemed charmed to find a friend who was
English, and told me that the Germans were dressed in the uniforms of
British soldiers, which they took from the dead and from prisoners in
order to deceive French villagers, who in many places in that district
had welcomed these wolves in sheep’s clothing. We were warned that
the enemy would be sure to track us up to the village. The curé said
he could hide the two wounded men in the crypt of his church, and
put up beds for them. It has a secret trapdoor, and was an ancient
treasure-house of a feudal lord, whose castle we saw in ruins at the
top of the hill close by. Then he hid away our saddlery and uniforms
in the roof of a barn, and insisted upon our making a rest-chamber of
the tower of his church, which was approached by a ladder, which we
were to pull up to the belfry as soon as we got there. He smuggled in
wine and meat and bread and cakes, fruit and cigarettes, with plenty
of bedding pulled up by a rope. We slept soundly, and the owls seemed
the only other tenants, who resented our intrusion. No troops passed
through the village that night. In the morning the curé came round at
six o’clock, and we heard him say Mass. After that we let down the
ladder, and he came up with delicious hot chocolate and a basket of
rolls and butter. Our horses he had placed in different stables a mile
apart, and put French “fittings” on them, so as to deceive the enemy:
_A Non-Commissioned Officer in the Dragoons_.