I am having a very interesting but a jolly hard time. About fourteen
days ago I was chased four miles by German Lancers. They were on
horses, and I was on my machine. The road was so bad they nearly had
me, but I stuck to it and got away. It has been raining “cats and dogs”
the last three days, and I am wet through, but happy and contented and
very well. I shall have loads to tell you when I get home--tales, I
fear, of pain, rapine, suffering, and all the horrors of a great war;
but all the same I have some funny experiences to relate as well:
_Special Dispatch-Rider A. R. Gurney_.
Unexpected!
On the Marne we spent two days on a long mine out towards the German
lines, and just when we were getting to the close of our job we heard
pickaxes going as fast and as hard as you like, and then the wall of
clay before us gave way, showing a party of Germans at the same game!
You never saw men more astonished in your life. “Fancy meeting you,”
was written all over their faces, and they hadn’t quite recovered from
their shock when we pounced on them. We had a pretty sharp scrap down
there indeed, but we got the best of it, though we had four of our
chaps laid out. One German devil was just caught in time with a fuse
which he was going to apply with the mad idea of blowing us all up!
_Sapper T. Gilhooly, Royal Engineers_.