THE BLACK WATCH

SCOUT JOE CASSELLS
OF THE BLACK WATCH

THE BLACK WATCH

A RECORD IN ACTION

BY

SCOUT JOE CASSELLS

One of the few survivors of that
“contemptible little army”

Frontispiece

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918

Copyright, 1918, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

FOREWORD

From Mons to the Marne lies the bloodiest trail of sacrifice in history. In all the records of war, there stands forth no more magnificent and no more melancholy achievement than that of the British regular army, which bled its heroic way in ever-diminishing numbers from the challenge to the check of the initial German sweep upon Paris. It could not hope for decisive victory; it could only clog the wheels of the Juggernaut with lives and lives and lives, sold bravely and dearly. Before a countless superiority of numbers and an incalculable advantage in enemy preparedness, it could only stand, and fall—and stand again, and fall—until the end; when the cause of the Allies was saved for the hour, and of French’s hundred thousand there remained barely a little leaven of trained men for the British forces then assembling to learn the trade of warfare.

The ablest pens writing of the Great War have paid tribute to this splendid deed which changed the course of its beginning. French’s retreat from Mons has been a topic to inspire the highest eloquence of the patriotic historian and the most profound admiration of the militarist. Everything, from the point of the onlooker, has been said of it. And everything that has been said retires into the perspective of the academic, when one reads, in this volume, the words of a trained British soldier who experienced and survived it. For stark and simple strength, for realism of detail, for a complete picturization of the desperate and heroic resistance of the sacrificial army, this soldier’s tale is, and will remain, unequalled and unique. This prefatory emphasis is not vain or extravagant. It need not fear the fact that there is but the turning of a page between promise and performance. Here is a writing which is of the war, and therefore differs from all writings which can only be about the war. It conveys to the reader an almost paralyzing sense of wonder at the steadfastness of Britain’s military traditions, put to an unexampled test. It shows how marvellously well a soldier may learn his business in advance—when his business is to die. Concerning one of the most noteworthy accomplishments of the arms of Britain, there will survive in print no more compelling and convincing narrative than this, the utterance of one whose trade was fighting and not writing.

THE BLACK WATCH

THE BLACK WATCH

CHAPTER ONE

For more than two years now, I have been trying to forget those first months of the war. The months when the Black Watch and other regiments of the immortal “contemptible little army” marched into the unknown against the fiercest, most efficient military power the world, up to that time, had known; the months when hidden enemies struck swiftly mystifying blows with strange weapons, the more terrible because we did not understand them and had never imagined their power and numbers.

For more than two years I have habitually sought to keep my mind upon other subjects, yet I can recall those days now in the minutest detail. I can hear the sudden thrum of the masked machine guns like giant partridges drumming; can hear the singing roar of the Prussian airplanes to which, in those days, because of the scarcity of British planes, there could be practically no answer; and I can live again the frightful nights when we made our stand upon the Marne, and, sneaking into German outpost trenches, slew the guards with jack-knives, thrusting gags into their mouths and cutting their throats to prevent outcry.

Those were the days of picturesque and shifty fighting. There was movement, the rush of cannon from the rear, the charges of cavalry, the perils of scouting and patrolling. It was little like the slow trench warfare which followed.

The Black Watch—the regiment to which I belong—was one of the first to cross the Channel. War was declared August 4th, which was Tuesday. The first-class reservists, of which I was one, received their mobilization orders the next day.

We assembled at Queens Barracks, Perth, the historic headquarters of what we proudly maintain is the world’s most famous fighting organization. Twice before, since 1742, the Black Watch had outfitted in Perth to fight in Flanders. Almost constantly since that date, battalions of the regiment have been fighting for Britain in some far-off quarter of the globe. For the third adventure in Flanders, which was to see the existing personnel of the regiment practically wiped out in an imperatively necessary campaign of blood sacrifice, our preparations were brisk and businesslike. Within three hours of my arrival at the depot at Perth, I was one of a thousand men, uniformed, armed, and fully equipped, who entrained for Aldershot to join our first battalion stationed there.

On the thirteenth of August, after a week’s stiff training, we boarded the steamship Italian Prince and the next day disembarked at Havre.

What awaited us there was much like the reception later given to the first American troops to land in France. What followed was quite different. The American troops, and millions of their friends and relatives, are all wondering what awaits them—what war really will be like—what they will have to do and the conditions under which they will do it.

It is an axiom of war that the first troops almost invariably suffer the greatest losses. The first American units to go into the trenches have suffered a low average of casualties. In one respect they are far better off than were the first British and French troops to meet the Germans. They know what they are going up against. Modern warfare is a determined quantity. They know the methods of the men they will fight against and they have allies able to instruct them in the art of fighting as it is practised to-day.

We had nothing like that. It was as though we were groping in the dark while an unseen foe was striking at us. For days we tramped through France and Belgium hearing the roar of the German guns, feeling the sting of the shrapnel, but not seeing our foes. Then came the shifty, open fighting, now almost forgotten, which will not be resumed until the Germans are on the run. When it comes it will be a welcome relief to the men who have been battling, like rats, in trenches not fit for human beings to inhabit.

Well, to get back to what happened to us, the first “contemptible little army,” in France and Flanders.

The 19th of August found us billeted in a town called Boué. We had to remain here a few days because the roads were blocked with transports going toward the front. The entire regiment was allowed to go swimming in a near-by canal and, as my chum and I were dressing, an old Frenchman gave us each a half-franc piece, saying that it would give us good luck and bring us through alive. It was the first money he had made as a boy and he had kept it ever since. The last I heard of my chum was that he had been discharged from active service because of wounds, and so it would appear his half-franc piece really did bring him through, just as mine did me.

We left Boué on the twenty-first at three o’clock in the morning, and we marched until three o’clock the next morning. All the time we could hear the muffled booming of the German heavy artillery. It sounded just like the noise they make on the stage when a battle is supposed to be in progress in the distance. It excited the men and buoyed them up wonderfully, but twenty-four hours is a long time to march without sleep, and whenever we halted the men lay down in the mud of the road and lost consciousness—but not for long. Within a few minutes after every halt, the officers would come among us and rouse us, saying that we were badly needed up where the guns were growling. It was hard, tiring work, but it wasn’t half so bad as what we got later, when we were retreating.

We didn’t know it, but we were on our way to Mons to hold the left flank.

It was during a short halt in Grande Range that we had our first sight of a German airplane. We were billeted in the houses and stables of the village, and every one came running out to look at the plane when the thrumming of the engine was heard. When it was right over our heads it let fly a rack full of steel darts and they came clattering down into the village streets. One stuck into the pavement in front of our quarters. It was so deeply imbedded that not a man in the company could pull it out. [I have seen one of these missiles go right through a house from roof to cellar. They have been known to go through a horse and then bury themselves in the ground.]

These steel darts were from eight inches to a foot long, cut so that they would fall point downward. Dozens of them were contained in a single rack, which the aviator released when he was over his target; the speed of the machine caused them to scatter. They would go through anything they hit, but they were found to be too inaccurate and not so economical as explosives.

After the plane had passed we were rushed to the outskirts of the village, where we began to entrench. By morning, we had nearly finished the shallow trenches which, in that day, were regarded as sufficient protection for infantry in the field. At daybreak our High Command had information that our position along the highway would prove untenable. Wearily enough, we marched to a range of wooded hills where we again entrenched. German heavy shells found us there, so we were compelled to retire to another village, near which we entrenched once more, on still higher ground. The German air scouts were watching us, however, and in this new position a heavier fire from long-range artillery found us.

All of this was on August 25th, two days after our forced march of twenty-four hours. The weather was extremely hot and we were well-nigh exhausted by the work of digging three sets of trenches. We lay and “took” the German fire. We had already had some casualties, the wooden steeple of the church in the village on our right was in flames, and several houses had been destroyed by the German shelling—and we hadn’t yet seen a German, except the airplane scouts. But they were not long coming into view.

As we lay in our shallow trenches, a big shell every now and then falling amongst us, another regiment, retreating under heavy fire, broke into view from the woods, a mile or more in front of our line. We soon made them out—the Scots Guards, hotly pursued by a superior force of Uhlans, and, as the German commander fondly believed, near capture. We, in our trenches, were in a fever to get our fire on the Germans but they were so close upon the Guards that we dared not fire a shot. The Guards, putting up a stiff fight directly in front of our position, checked the Uhlans sufficiently to enable their own organization to continue its retreat, swinging over in the direction of our left flank. This gave us our chance and we poured a hot rifle and machine-gun fire into the pursuing force.

We were in action against the Boches, at last! and, furthermore, we had the satisfaction of seeing that our fire was effective. The Uhlans, whose attention now was forcibly distracted from the hard-pressed Guards to us, immediately advanced in our direction, dismounting at 1,200 yards distance and returning our fire. Leaving their horses behind a ridge, they crept up on us to within 500 yards.

At this point, a water cart belonging to the Guards, which had been hidden in a thicket, popped out, and was being driven in the direction of their regiment. A party of about thirty Uhlans galloped after it. We turned some of our fire on them. I think they were all toppled over, horses and men alike. Then another party of about five thousand Uhlans made toward us at a gallop and charged, but there were few of them that got to within one hundred yards of our single shallow trench. By this time the Scots Guards had got into position and opened fire on the Boche cavalry.

Three times the Germans tried to secure the water cart, thinking no doubt it was an ammunition wagon. When the cart was about one hundred and fifty yards from our trench the horses were shot down by the Uhlans. One of the men on it was wounded through the arm, and the other coolly filled his water bottle and bathed his comrade’s wound, regardless of the Huns who were still peppering away. We shouted to the two boys to hurry and come into safety. The wounded one’s answer was:

“Safety be damned! Some of you Jocks come out here and give us a pull with the water cart.”

Men of our H company, nearest to the cart, asked permission to go to the rescue. Their officers acquiesced and sixteen of them rushed out, cut the cart loose from the dead horses, and dragged it to safety behind the ridge which we were holding. Three of the sixteen were hit. There were especial reasons for this bit of valour. Our own water bottles were empty, our water cart drained dry, and we were choking with thirst.

It was now the time of the Scots Guards to help us. They kept a steady fire on the Uhlans while we retired behind the ridge to fall in on the main road to Hautmont and retreat to the next spot where we could make a temporary stand. While we were falling back to the main road, a man from each section filled three water bottles from the rescued cart. We didn’t know when we would get water again, nor how far our tired feet must carry us. In this exhausted state we began the furious fatal struggle against an overwhelming and irresistible enemy which is known in history as the Retreat from Mons.

Of that fearful time, I have lost track of dates. I do not want to remember them. All I recollect is that, under a blazing August sun—our mouths caked, our tongues parched—day after day we dragged ourselves along, always fighting rear-guard actions, our feet bleeding, our backs breaking, our hearts sore. Our unmounted officers limped amongst us, blood oozing through their spats. With a semblance of cheeriness they told us that we must retreat because the Russians were on their way to Berlin and we must keep the Germans moving in the opposite direction. When we got a few minutes’ respite there would be an issue of “gunfire”—the traditional British army term for tea served out to men in action. It was of a nondescript flavour, commingling the negative qualities of “bully-beef stew” and the very positive taste of kerosene oil, the cooks’ hurricane lamps being stored in the camp-kettles during each of our retirements. Invariably—and I mean in twenty instances—the shells would begin to drop amongst us before we could finish our portions, eating, though we did, with ravenous haste; and when it was not artillery fire that stopped our feeding it would be a charge of Uhlans, compelling us to drop half-emptied mess-tins and seize rifles.

We had no artillery to speak of, and very few airplanes. If we had had more of the latter, there might have been another story. The Germans seemed to know every move we made, but we were blind. We dropped into a field and killed a bullock, skinned it and were cooking it. There came the roar of a powerful engine; a German plane circled over us and went sailing back, signalling our position. A few minutes later shrapnel fell among us and we went on, some of the men in ambulances. Those that were killed we hurriedly buried, but there was not time even to put improvised wooden crosses at their heads.

One of our slightly wounded, in the broad accents of lowland Scotch, cursed the Germans—not for wounding him, but for knocking over his canteen of tea. A hail of flying shrapnel struck down a cook; the men of his section cursed in chorus for the misfortune which meant that hunger would be added to their other miseries.

Not once alone did we spring up from eating to fight the Uhlans with rifle fire and bayonet. It happened a dozen times. Whenever the Uhlans came, we fought them off, but always we had to retreat in the end, for the German reserves were numberless while ours scarcely existed.

CHAPTER TWO

Most of the time while we were dragging our exhausted, diminishing numbers ahead of the German wave of shot and steel, I was on scout duty. For a while, I was “connecting file” between the Black Watch and the Munster Fusiliers who were in rear of us and almost constantly in touch with the enemy. I had more than one narrow escape from capture or death.

On one occasion the regiment had been deployed to beat off a flank attack. When we resumed the march I was sent back to get in touch with the Fusiliers. My orders were to go to the rear until I got in touch with them. I was proceeding cautiously along the road when suddenly around a curve something appeared before me. My rifle was at my shoulder ready to fire. Then I recognized what had been a uniform of the Fusiliers.

Have you ever read Kipling’s “Man Who Came Back”? If you have, you will have a better idea than I can give you of what this human being looked like. His face was covered with blood. One arm hung limply. Just as he made toward me, he fell exhausted by the roadside, like a dog that is spent. Literally, his tongue hung from his mouth. His shoes were cut up and his clothes dangled in ribbons beneath which red gashes showed in his flesh where he had torn it in the barbed-wire fences he had encountered, crossing fields.

I asked him what had happened. His lips moved and his breath came in more difficult gasps, but no word could he utter. I wiped his face, and then I recognized in him an officer who had been a crack athlete when the Munsters were in India and against whom I had competed more than once. I pressed my water bottle to his lips. After a few moments he was able to speak.

“They are gone!” he gasped; “all of them are gone! By God, they died like men; but—they—died.”

“Let me understand you, sir,” I begged him. “Tell me just what happened.”

“Where are you going?” he almost shouted.

“I am going back to get in touch with the Munster Fusiliers,” I said.

“You can’t make the journey,” he panted. “You’d have to go to heaven—or to hell. They caught them in a pocket. Shrapnel and machine-guns. There are no Munster Fusiliers any more.”

He was right, practically. The Germans had caught them between fires and the regiment was cut to pieces.

Helping the officer as best I could, I hurried forward to catch up with my own regiment. When I got in touch with it I left the Fusilier officer with the commander of the first company I met. Then I hurried to the Company commander.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I am here, to report, sir,” I said. “There is no use trying to get in touch with the Fusiliers. They have been cut off.”

“Your orders were to go back until you got in touch with them,” he said gruffly. “Consider yourself under arrest.”

A non-commissioned officer and two men, with fixed bayonets, were put on guard over me. I had disobeyed orders, technically, and during those first days in France many a stern act was necessary, for the army had to learn the discipline of war.

I would have been tied to a spare wheel at the back of an artillery caisson, but as they were leading me away I asked to speak to my sergeant. I explained to him what had happened and he told my company commander, who found the officer of the Fusiliers. The latter, meanwhile, had been taken care of by our officers and was now in condition to talk. He spoke to the colonel (Col. Grant Duff), explaining just what had happened and telling him that he had directed me to return to my regiment. I was liberated, but it was a mighty close escape from disgrace, which, after all, is worse than death, especially to a soldier.

After that I was sent out to scout on the left flank with my partner, Troolen, who was of a daredevil disposition and worked in a noisy fashion, and so when I saw something moving in the brushwood on a ridge we were approaching, and heard a sound like the trample of horses on the other side, I cautioned him to remain where he was while I explored it. Troolen swore he could hear nothing and was for muddling ahead and running into anything that might be there, but I was in command and I ordered him to wait. Sneaking from stone to stone and from tree to tree, I worked myself to a little pocket which seemed scalloped out of the crest of the ridge and found the ground there all freshly trampled, with other signs that horses had left it recently. There were no wheel marks, so I knew that it was cavalry, not artillery. From the marks of the iron shoes I could tell that they were of a different type from ours.

Uhlans had been there.

I signalled to Troolen and he joined me. Climbing to the crest of the ridge we saw the enemy in large numbers moving toward the road on which we were marching, and they were ahead of us. As we hurried toward our regiment we heard others in the rear.

As fast as I could, I made my way to the Company commander and reported what I had seen. Almost at the same moment we were fired upon. The rifle fire was immediately followed by artillery shelling. Patrols on the other flank had made sketches of the country and orders were issued for the regiment to take cover in a gully which was across some fields and the other side of a small woods. The men ducked through a wire fence which was at the side of the road and sections of it were torn to let the combat wagons through.

As we retreated we kept up a steady fire, forcing the Uhlans close to their cover, but the artillery continually sprayed over the field.

Thus began for us the Battle of the Oise.

We had little hope of any support. We knew we had to fight it out alone, and there was little enough ammunition. I was running and ducking for the next bit of cover from behind which I could use my rifle, when a shell exploded behind me. It threw me from my feet but I was unhurt and as I jumped up I heard a crashing and splintering a few feet away. One of the horses on an ammunition wagon had been struck. He was plunging on the ground, terrifying his team mate and kicking the wagon to pieces. The transport officer, C. R. B. Henderson, drew his revolver and shot the animal.

The Uhlans must have had reinforcements for they were getting bolder. The bullets were cutting up little spurts of dust and turf all about us. They were singing overhead like a gale in the ropes and spars of a transport at sea. The Germans were firing at the ammunition wagon in the hope of blowing it up.

I was just about to run for cover again when I saw Lieut. Henderson—he who had shot the transport horse—walk calmly up (leading his own animal) and cut the dead one from the traces. I didn’t care about being killed, but I couldn’t leave this officer, who was standing there as though he were on parade, except that his hands were working ten times as fast as they ever did at drill. Together we got the dead animal free and harnessed the lieutenant’s horse to the wagon. We used one of the lieutenant’s spiral puttees to mend the cut and broken harness. The driver of the ammunition wagon was holding the head of the other horse, shaking his fist at the Germans, and swearing at them with a heavy Scotch burr.

Men were running past us like rabbits. Some of them were tumbling like rabbits, too, when a steel-nosed bullet found its mark. I saw others stoop, just long enough to get an arm under the shoulders of a comrade and then drag him along. A few lay still and a single look into their faces showed that it would be useless to carry them. The running men dropped behind stones, hillocks, trees—anything that was likely to afford cover and stop bullets—and their rifles snapped angrily at the Germans whose fire was getting heavier, but who still did not dare an open attack.

At last the harness was ready. The ammunition driver leaped to his seat and the wagon went careening toward the ravine, swaying crazily, with a storm of shots tearing up the turf around its wheels. We needed that wagon badly. In a moment it would be over the crest of the rise and we would be sure of that much ammunition to fight with.

“Get on to the wagon, sir,” I shouted to the officer, as it dashed forward; but he did not heed me.

“In a second we shall be where we can fight them off,” was all he said.

A Uhlan’s horse, with empty saddle, galloped up to us. I seized the dangling reins.

“Mount him, sir,” I shouted. He took the reins from my hand and attempted to leap into the saddle. The horse was cut and bleeding, and unmanageable from terror. He backed toward the ammunition wagon, which had not yet made the ridge, dragging the officer with him. I followed.

Just as we thus neared the wagon, a shell exploded close at hand. The wagon humped up in the middle as if it had been made of whalebone. It rocked from side to side, almost upsetting. Then it settled back upon its wrecked wheels. A high explosive shell had struck directly under it. The two horses fell, dead from shrapnel or shock, and the driver toppled from his seat, dead, between them, a red smear across his face.

The small-arms ammunition in the wagon had not been exploded. The doors of the wagon were thrown open by the concussion of the shell, causing the bandoliers of cartridges to scatter. The officer motioned to me to help distribute the ammunition to our men as they ran past; upon finishing this task we joined the last of our party and were very soon over the crest. We had only a few machine guns, but we got them in place. The Uhlans were charging across the field.

A shrill whistle blew.——The machine guns began to rattle. Down went horses and riders, plunging about where some of our own men lay. Our rifle fire, too, was getting stronger, better controlled, more co-ordinated. We were sheltered; the enemy was in the open. His artillery was useless, for we were coming to grips. Line after line, they broke into the field, lances set. The horses were stretching out low over the turf—over the turf where a moment later they were to kick out the last of their breath, pinning under them many a rider to whom we were paying the debt of the Munster Fusiliers.

A bugle sounded.——Those that were left of the Uhlans galloped off. The little machine guns had done their work.

Our attention was then attracted to a heavy fire, directed from some unknown quarter upon a near-by field in which was confined a large herd of light brown cattle, their colour identical with that of our khaki uniforms. The animals were milling about madly; a dozen of them already were down and others were falling each moment. Here was one of the humours of war. We laughed, believing that the Germans were firing upon the dying beasts, mistaking them for us—“The Ladies from Hell,” as they called us.

The Scots Greys, which regiment had come up at this critical moment to occupy the high ground on our right flank about six hundred yards away, through the fierceness of their enfilading fire, managed to keep the enemy at a standstill and so allowed the Black Watch to retreat to safety.

We owed our lives to kind fate in bringing the Scots Greys to our timely aid, and to them all honour! But for them we should have met the fate of the Munster Fusiliers.

Crawling on their bellies, some of our men went out and brought in those of the Black Watch who were lying wounded. The others we left, for their own men would be there presently. For us, it was retreat again. After traversing ditches, ravines and barbed-wire fences, we finally assembled on the road. The artillery was beginning to pound once more. We had to trudge on, watching for the next attack, planting one bleeding foot before another, with nobody knew how many days of forced marching before us—marching (so we thought) to let the Russians get to Berlin. I don’t think anything else would have induced us to resume our retreat after the brush with the Uhlans.

At evening we found ourselves at the village of Oise about six miles from the abovementioned scene. As we arrived at the bridge over the River Oise, the engineers who were on the other side, and who had fused the bridge, shouted to us to keep back, but our colonel gave us the order to double. We had cleared the bridge by about only two hundred yards, when it blew up into atoms!

After trudging, mostly uphill, in a downpour of rain, we reached a place called Guise at 2 A.M. Here we managed to get some food. I was glad enough to throw my waterproof sheet over me and fall asleep. On being awakened, I felt as though I had slept for weeks, but found it had only been for one hour and twenty minutes. We then received some “gunfire” and our first issue of rum. We resumed the march. On arriving at La Grange, the Camerons, or what was left of them, joined us, taking the place of the annihilated Fusiliers in our brigade.

We were so tired that night that I could have slept on a bed of nails, points up, but we had not been in our billets very long when we were ordered out, as the outpost had reported the approach of Uhlans in considerable numbers.

We were half asleep as we ran down into the street to our allotted posts. One of the first persons we encountered in the town was a Frenchman, raving mad. We asked him what was the matter, but he could not reply. He jibbered like an ape; his twitching lips slavered and foamed. Some of his neighbours took him in hand and led him away. One of them told us his story:

“The Prussians came in here yesterday. There was no one to resist them. They posted sentries. Then those who were not on duty broke into cellars. Casks of wine were rolled up into the streets, and, where squads gathered together, there were piles of bottles. The soldiers did not stop to pull the corks. They knocked off the necks of the bottles and filled their aluminum cups with red wine and white, mixing one type with another, and swilling it in as fast as they could drink. Dozens of them fell in the gutters, drunk. Others reeled through the village, abusing and insulting men and women alike. If a man resisted, he was shot. This poor fellow, whom you have seen, was in his door yard with his wife. A Prussian seized her about the waist. She struggled. He crushed her to him with his brutish arm. His companions, all drunk, laughed and jeered. The woman’s clothes were ripped from her shoulders in her struggle. Meanwhile others bound the husband to one of his own fruit trees, so that he could not escape the horror of it. One—more drunken, more bestial than the others—slashed off the woman’s breasts and threw them to a dog. The woman died.”

This of itself was enough to have made us rage against the enemy whom hitherto we had regarded as an honourable foe, but it was not all. I, with other members of my own company, came upon a nail driven into the wall of a barn from which hung, by the mouth, the lifeless form of a baby. The child was dead when we found it, but it had died hanging from the rusty nail. I know it had, because I saw upon the wall the marks of finger-nails where the baby had clawed and scratched. And besides, a dead body would not have bled. An officer ordered the removal of the child’s body.

I do not tell these things for the sake of the horror of them. I would rather not tell them. I have spent months trying to forget them. Now that I have recalled them, I wake in the night so horrified that I cannot move. But to relate them may serve one useful purpose. There are those in America, as there were in England, who believed that war to repel invasion was justified, but who were not enthusiastic for war abroad. America entered the war after her patience was absolutely exhausted, and Americans should be devoutly thankful that they can fight abroad and not have to endure the presence of a single Prussian soldier on American soil. What we saw and learned in Guise galvanized our weary bodies to new efforts against the vandals whom we were fighting. With clenched teeth and curses we turned to fight again.

The Uhlans got into the outskirts of the town and cut down a number of our men, but, inch by inch, as they drove toward the centre of the village, our resistance became stiffer and stiffer. It was like a nightmare. The charging horses, the gruff shouts of the enemy, the groans of the men who fell beside me, were like their counterparts in a dream. My finger pressed the trigger of the rifle feverishly. Even when I saw the men I fired at topple from their saddles and sprawl on the cobblestones, I had only a dull sense that I had scored a hit.

Just as we were throwing the enemy back in some confusion, a party of British worked round a back street and fired on them from the rear. A second later a machine gun began strewing the ground with horses and men. Squads of them threw up their hands and cried: “Kamerad! Kamerad!”—which was not a new cry on the part of the Prussians. A young fellow by my side stopped firing for a moment, but the rest of us knew better. The Camerons had lost a score of men the day before because they had taken the Germans at their word, and, when they went to make them prisoners, a whole company of Prussians had risen from behind the crest to a hill and shot the Camerons down. So bullets from our rifles answered the cries of “Kamerad!”

A few of the enemy escaped down side streets, and a number of them remained lying where they had been shot. While we were on our way back to quarters, a Frenchman came up out of his basement and motioned us to follow him. We went into the cellar and found half a dozen Prussians lying there dead drunk. We made them prisoners and sent them to headquarters.

CHAPTER THREE

I had about got settled in the stable where I was billeted, when orders came to “stand to.” No more sleep that night. We took the road and left La Grange behind us just as the sun was pinking the sky. It was Sunday, and, although we knew war was no respecter of the Sabbath, we had not been in the field long enough to get the idea quite out of our heads that Sunday, somehow, in the nature of things, was a little easier than other days. When we halted in a ravine at about ten o’clock in the morning, after marching four hours, we thought after all that it was going to be an easier day. I was on outpost duty on a side road a little way from the main thoroughfare we had been following.

Suddenly an infernal racket broke out over to our left. First there came a few scattered cracks of rifle fire. Then I could hear clip firing and the rattle of machine guns. I learned later that the Scots Greys and the 12th Lancers had come across about seven thousand Germans resting in a wide gully. The Greys and the Lancers, catching them unawares by cutting down their sentries who had no opportunity even to give the alarm—charged through them, then back again. Three times they repeated their performance, while some of our brigade got on to the flanks and poured in such a rapid fire that the Prussians had no opportunity to re-form to meet each repetition of the attack. The details do not matter, but they made up for the annihilation of the Munster Fusiliers.

In the newspaper accounts of the campaign this incident was described as the “Great St. Quentin Charge,” in which, it was asserted, the Black Watch (foot soldiers) participated, holding onto the stirrups of the Scots Greys. This bit of colouring was an inaccuracy. We aided the Greys and the Lancers with rifle and machine-gun fire only. When the firing ceased and the Greys and the Lancers came cantering past, we learned from them the details of the Battle of “St. Quentin.”

At nightfall our section was still guarding the road at a point from which a cart road branched off at right angles to the main thoroughfare. It was here that the outpost received instructions in a few French phrases, the main one being “Votre passe, s’il vous plait.” (“Your pass, please.”) This was because the road was open to refugees who were fleeing from the Boches, and who had to show passes before being allowed to go on. The absence of the pass meant that the person would be sent to headquarters for examination.

It was quite natural that some of us Scots should find it difficult to make ourselves familiar with these phrases. However, we were all willing to try. One strapping Highlander, weary and footsore but daunted by nothing, practised the phrases dutifully, though the French words were almost lost in the encounter with his native Scotch. We chuckled, but he merely glowered at us indignantly, and then went to take his place on sentry go. Two Frenchmen came along in a wagon. The Highlander blocked their way and sternly uttered what he conceived to be the phrase he had been told to use. The Frenchmen sat mystified. There was a roar of laughter when the Highlander, losing patience, shouted: “Pass us if ye daur!” Then his sergeant came to the rescue.

These two Frenchmen in the wagon were the last refugees to pass. Soon afterward, from my station farther down the road, I heard a clatter of hoofs and caught a glimpse of Uhlans’ helmets. I had barely time to pass the word to the man on the next post and to jump behind a log before they came into view. They were riding, full gallop into our lines, apparently having abandoned ordinary scouting precautions in their eagerness to strike where and when they might against our worn and lacerated forces. We, now, had fought so long that we fought mechanically. Over my protecting log, I aimed at the leading horseman as precisely and carefully as if I had been at rifle practice. When I pulled the trigger he tumbled into the road, rolled over awkwardly, and lay still. I did not feel as if I had killed a man. I felt only a mild sense of satisfaction with the accuracy of my aim. Bitter hate for the Huns had sprung in the heart of every one of us after what we had that day seen of their savagery.

I had got my Uhlan at, perhaps, seventy yards. His fall checked the squad’s advance for a moment only. The man nearest grasped at the bridle of the dead man’s horse but missed it. On they all came, galloping recklessly and yelling, the riderless horse leading by a half dozen lengths. As they rode, they fired in my direction, but their bullets went wide. I felt real compunction as I aimed at the head of the leading horse—the one whose rider I had shot down with only a sense of satisfaction. I could hear our men crashing through the bushes by the road as they came to my support. I fired. My bullet must have struck the riderless horse in the brain, for he fell instantly, sprawled out in the path of the galloping Huns behind. The horses of the leaders stumbled over the fallen animal. A rattle of shots from our men completed the confusion of the Uhlans. They turned their horses and galloped away—some back along the road, others across the fields. Several fell under our fire; how many we had no time to ascertain.

After that little affair we organized our position for a somewhat better defence. Leaving a few scouts, far advanced, we stationed our men in easy touch with each other and then cut down a number of trees and telegraph poles and barricaded the road with them. There were sixteen of us in the post near this barricade, concealed from view and able to communicate with each other in whispers. The hours dragged on to midnight and past. We were weary to the bone—half dead for want of sleep—but we dared not relax our vigilance for an instant.

The surrounding country was dense with woods. The moon was almost new, so consequently the poles were quite invisible a few yards away.

At about one o’clock in the morning I heard something crackling through the brush on the side road. My bayonet was fixed and I was ready to fire. The crackling came nearer. I crept stealthily forward to meet whatever it was. Presently a man stepped into the road. “Halt!” I cried. He halted at once, and gave the word “Friend.” It was one of our sentries with a message that Uhlans were coming along the road. Three men were farther down the road; they had hidden so that the Uhlans would pass them, the sentry said.

A section of us concealed ourselves—and waited. Presently the Uhlans came into sight, proceeding cautiously. Half of us were instructed to withhold fire until the Prussians should reach the barricade. The remainder began to fire. The horsemen scattered to each side of the road and returned the fire, but as we were not discernible, the shots went wild. I judged that they numbered about fifty. We dropped a few of them. They were becoming enraged—their fire ineffective. They mounted; and the leader spurred his horse, and, followed by the others, galloped in our direction. Their carbines spat red flashes into the night. Their bullets were coming closer now, because they could determine where we were lying in the ditches at the side of the road from the flashes of our rifles.

“Will they see the trees across the roadway?” was the thought that darted through my mind. If they should, it would probably be all up with us. As they came very close to the barricade, they did notice it. They made a bold leap across, but having underestimated the number of logs there, they found themselves in great confusion. Some of them were pinned under their fallen horses. At this point, we opened fire, which completed their discomfiture. Above the sound of our rifle firing we could hear the now-familiar cry of “Kamerad!” “Kamerad!” It only served to infuriate us and made us shoot all the faster.

This might well arouse against us the criticism of those who never witnessed atrocities committed by the Huns, but you must remember that our blood had not come down to normal from the effects of the sights we ourselves had come across.

At last, we leaped out to make prisoners of the trapped Uhlans. Those who could, bolted back in the direction they came from, but it was a sure thing that twelve of them were missing when the roll was called.

One might consider that a night’s work, but it wasn’t.

It was now my turn for sentry go on the main road, which was still open for vehicles of our staff. This was a post where it was thought that, to use an American phrase, there would be “nothing doing”; yet it was here that I came face to face with one of the war’s finest examples of Teutonic over-assurance—boldness that would have been splendid had it not been stupid.

After I had been at my new post an hour, it then being near three o’clock in the morning, a motor car came swiftly toward me. I had been warned that I might expect staff officers to pass, and this, I thought, was undoubtedly some of them—otherwise the car would have advanced slowly. I stepped into the road and awaited its approach. As it neared me I saw that the two officers it contained wore the uniforms of the British staff. I could see the red tabs on their collars.

There were two telegraph poles across the road near my post. Remembering this, I showed myself and called for the chauffeur to halt. He checked the car’s speed but brought it ahead slowly. I shouted for the countersign. I was waiting for the occupants of the car to give it, intending to explain to them that they would have to stop until I called some one to help me remove the telegraph poles, when there was a sudden grinding of gears and the car shot ahead, full speed. I yelled a warning about the poles but the words left my lips at about the moment when the car bounced over them.

Until that time I had no suspicion that the occupants of the car were not what they seemed. Even then, the manner in which they “rushed” my post seemed to me only due to some inexplicable misunderstanding. But I had marched, and fought, and gone sleepless and hungry until I was little more than a mechanical soldier. I was able to realize only that somebody, for some reason, had ignored my challenge and rushed a sentry post. I swung my rifle in the direction of the car, aimed accurately (in an automatic way), and pulled the trigger. The noise of an exploding tire followed the crack of my weapon. The car skidded, twisted for a moment, and then went on—faster than ever.

My shot aroused our outpost. The alarm was given to the first of the connecting sentries and passed along quickly until it reached our company headquarters, on the roadside opposite to a château in which Brigade Staff headquarters had been established. Men half awake, tumbled into the roadway preparing to fire on something or somebody—they didn’t know what. It was useless for the car to attempt to rush the crowd. Again the chauffeur checked it, this time bringing it to a full stop. One of the occupants (who, it will be remembered, were in staff uniform) demanded sharply of the sentry in front of the château:

“What is the meaning of this? Are there nothing but blockheads about here? We have been fired on while looking for Brigade headquarters. Somebody should be court-martialled for this.”

The sentry saluted them and admitted them to the grounds of the château.

Their car had disappeared within the gates when I came running down the road and informed my company commander what had happened. He instantly ordered our men to surround the château and rushed in himself, following the car up the avenue leading through the grounds. The “staff officers” had abandoned their car in the shadow of a clump of trees and were seeking to escape over the garden wall when our men captured them. One of them, speaking English without a trace of accent, still tried to “bluff” our men who seized him, and his assumed indignation was so convincing that, but for the direct orders from the company commander, the men might have released him, believing him really an officer of our forces. Each of the two wore the uniform of a staff major with all the proper badges and insignia. It was found that they were German spies with rough maps of the disposition of our retreating forces and other valuable information in their possession. I was informed, later, that they were shot.

Before dawn, we got orders to retire again. It was always retire—retire. We were ready to fight ten times our number if only we could stop retiring.

Shortly after leaving this position we saw an airplane overhead. A few minutes later shrapnel began bursting in our direction. We scattered to each side of the highway, keeping under cover as best we could.

We marched all day—God knows how far—and finally, between one and two the following morning, reached a place which we believed to be Pinon.

CHAPTER FOUR

As we neared Pinon, the sound of artillery fire could be heard, and the inhabitants were all leaving the town in any way that they could. Here I saw further effects of Prussian atrocities.

At this spot, a French woman, supporting her mutilated husband as best she could, passed us in a buggy. The sight was awful! His face and body were almost entirely covered with gashes from the Prussians’ bayonets. His wife’s face was as white as death except where three cruel cuts had laid it open. Neither of this pitiful pair was less than sixty years old. Fine “enemies” for soldiers’ weapons!

Beyond this last village we lay in the open for a few hours’ rest. We were so utterly exhausted that officers and men alike threw themselves upon the ground and instantly were asleep. My last waking recollection was of the sight of an officer of the guard striding wearily to and fro. He was afraid even to sit for fear sleep might conquer him. And my next recollection—seemingly coming right on the heels of the one I have mentioned—was of being shaken by the shoulders and having the warning shouted into my ear that we had got orders to force-march instantly.

“They say some of the blighters have got round us by the flank,” said the man who shook me. “Make haste!”

We had rested less than three hours. Off we went on another “retirement.” This time under the drive of urgent necessity for speed.

We must have marched at an extraordinary rate, because it was not yet noon when we arrived at the outskirts of Soissons. From the high ground on our right flank, we could see cavalry and artillery in great numbers, but whether ours or the enemy’s, none of us knew—not even the officers. As we arrived in the town we were greeted with artillery fire; then we knew who it was that awaited us.

We got into a lumber yard and returned the fire, but I don’t think either side did much damage. Their bullets sang through the lumber gallery. The melody was one that had become familiar to us.

Retreating through Soissons, we kept up a stiff fight, arriving intact at the farther end of the town. Here we came upon fresh and terrible evidence of the ruthlessness and wanton cruelty of the foe which we had first confronted but a few days before, then believing that the traditions of honourable warfare still existed. We came across scores of refugees—old men and women—who had been beaten and driven from their homes without cause. We had passed the dead bodies of many townspeople—killed, seemingly, by artillery fire, yet, in some cases, exhibiting suspicious wounds, as if bayonets or lances had been used. It was not, however, until we were marching through the throng of refugees, outside the town, that indisputable and utterly shocking proofs of the inhumanity of the Huns came to our eyes. In perambulators we saw wailing children with mangled or missing hands. I know that it has been hotly disputed that such dastardly crimes as these were committed by the Germans. I know also that the disputants who contend against the truth of these reports never marched with us the weary and awful miles amid the fleeing and miserable people of Soissons.

These mutilated children I, myself, and my comrades saw. Two at least, I recollect with bloody stumps where baby hands had been, and one whose foot had been severed at the ankle. I saw these things. I saw them; and I live to say that others with me saw them—brawny Highlanders whose tears of pity flowed with those of the mothers who wept for heart-break and with those of the babies who wept from the pain of the wounds which had maimed them. Ay, there were witnesses enough; and witnesses remain, though many of the Black Watch who that day saw and cursed the cowardly brutality of the Huns were to lie, but too soon, with their voices hushed for ever, so that they may not speak of it. But we who still live may tell of it—and dare a challenge of the truth of what we say! And those who saw, and died—paying the toll of that bloody passing from the Mons to the Marne—have told it, no doubt, ere this—before that Court whose judgment can impose the eternal punishment that the soulless crimes demand.

There were thousands in the unhappy throng of refugees. Some few rode upon hay carts, surrounded by such of their belongings as they had been able hastily to gather. Others pushed handcarts containing their goods and household articles. Most of them however, went afoot, trudging wearily along and carrying what they might. There, in that sickening scene, it was as it is everywhere. The grotesque and the humorous mixed incongruously with the pathetic. For instance: Alongside one perambulator with a wounded child in it rolled another one loaded with huge rings of bread, on top of which perched a parrot, screaming at every one who passed.

One old lady was trudging along carrying a baby which could not have been more than two and a half years old, though the weight of his chubby frame was bending her almost double. I could not speak her language, but I made her understand that I would carry the child a mile or two and leave him by the side of the road. The laughter and baby antics of the child brought a ray of sunshine to our section, and especially to fathers who had left tots behind them in Scotland. About an hour later I came to a group by the roadside, who recognized the baby, and I left him with them, making them understand that the old lady would be along later.

One of the last things I remember in leaving Soissons was an old man who was carrying his furniture and household goods to what looked like a modern dug-out in an embankment and covering it with earth so that it would not be discovered. The boys made a lot of fun of him, but the laugh was not on their lips very long.

We had just reached the top of a hill on the farther side of the city, overlooking the railroad yards and repair shops, when we came into direct view of the German artillery observers, and shrapnel began to storm down among us. It was like the sudden burst of a thunder cloud. There wasn’t a moment’s warning before the smoke puffs began appearing overhead and the ugly steel splinters and slugs whizzed over our heads.

The regiment deployed in a corn field at one side of the road and scattered, moving some distance from the highway. The enemy continued to sprinkle the corn with shrapnel but we lay flat on the ground until the firing ceased. The company’s cooks meanwhile, at some little distance ahead of us, had prepared “gunfire,” and the various companies lined up in file to receive their well-earned and much-desired quota of it. As the cooks had to keep ahead of the regiment, there was no time lost in disposing of the tea, and many of the men had to drink it on the run.

A little farther on we halted for a few hours’ sleep, and at ten minutes to three we found ourselves again on the move. We marched all that day through a large and dense forest. Now and again we were surprised by occasional artillery shots at the more open sections, but the trees helped a great deal in protecting us from the enemy’s airplanes, and proved a hindrance to their tactics. But with the cavalry it was a different matter. Uhlans harassed us every hour of the day. We had only about two machine guns to a battalion, and they were worked so steadily and so hard that they repeatedly jammed. Once we were almost cut off. A party of Uhlans came clattering down on our heels driving the rear guard in on the support, and for a few moments there was what approached a modern barrage fire of artillery on the road in our front. Luckily for us, the artillery fire slackened for some reason and we got ahead before the Uhlans could envelop us.

Later in the day I was serving in the rear guard. Suddenly we heard the roaring of a motor. We took cover at the sides of the road. Our “point”—was in the rear, and, if there was anything wrong, we knew they would inform us. The roaring of the motor grew louder. We were so tired that our nerves jangled. I had never felt so jumpy. There it came around the bend with a Red Cross flag flying from it, but it was not one of our ambulances. It had great, heavy, double wheels and there were Red Crosses painted on its sides in addition to the flag flying from the front. Our impression was that it had gone off its course. The chauffeur had released the muffler cut-out and the engine was running very quietly now. A man sitting beside the driver and leaning far out over the side was yelling in broken English that they were lost, and he gesticulated toward the body of the car in such a way as to make us think that he had badly wounded men with him.

We began scrambling back onto the road. Our war was not against the wounded and suffering, so we would let them pass.

Suddenly the ambulance stopped; the sides of it quickly rose; machine guns showed their ugly muzzles.

“Br-r-r-r-r t-t-t,” they began to sputter.

I leaped backward and fell headlong into the ditch. Everybody was jumping for cover. The bullets lashed the road and ricocheted far upon it. Scarcely a man of us was hit, but we were in wild confusion. I cannot describe the scene. No one seemed to think of putting his rifle to his shoulder. The horror of it—the passionate anger against such vile trickery—drove us into a rage; but—for the moment—it was an impotent rage. We seemed to be at their mercy.

Then the platoon commander’s voice rose above the rat-a-tat of the machine guns:

“Steady, men! Fire at will, but pick your men carefully.”

We had heard him speak in the same tone on parade. It brought us to our senses. The edge of the ditch on each side of the road fairly flamed with the sputter of rifle fire. The “ambulance” was riddled. A Prussian officer toppled into the middle of the road. Half a dozen men sprang from the ditch and rushed at him with bayonets. They killed him like a rat. There was no compunction about it.

There was now heard the thrumming of more motors approaching. Round the turn in the road they came. This time it was transports—laden with German troops. There was no attempt at disguise with this mob. They thought that their camouflaged battery would by now have done its dirty work. Sweating and tugging and straining, we managed to topple the “ambulance” over in the road. The trucks came dashing up as we retreated—retreated only to get in touch with our support. The men cheered wildly as two of our own machine guns came up. We turned the wee fellows loose on the Germans—gave them a taste of their own medicine.

Some of them came running toward us shouting: “Kamerad! Kamerad!” We shot them down as they ran—shot them without hesitation—after the dastardly trick they had played on us. Probably they were even then trying another ruse.

The fight surged backward and forward. The Germans tried to press ahead.

Then something happened which we had not expected. A burst of shrapnel sprayed over the Germans. In a few seconds there was another. Then two shells exploded at once—three—four! A rain of fire, as the French say, was upon them. We were getting support from our own artillery. That was something new and it put heart into us.

The regiment re-formed and proceeded with an orderly retirement, while the artillery, like a barrier of steel, held the enemy at his distance all the rest of the day. We were near to exhaustion and some of the men dropped out of the ranks only to die of the strain. Although our pipers were as weary as the rest of us, they sensed that we needed encouragement, and with great effort struck up a march. Very soon we had left the forest behind us.

It is impossible to describe the effect of the skirl of those pipes that day. It was like a message from Heaven. We had not heard them since Mons, and now they were leading us out of a forest that was a picture of weirdness itself; leading us out into the beautiful open country. What joy we felt!

At this time we were retiring almost directly toward Paris. For seventeen hours we marched with halts only when it was absolutely necessary. We had been in France four weeks, though it seemed like four years.

One of our chief discomforts was the lack of water. Toward evening we halted alongside a cucumber patch. The men simply went wild, running into the field and sucking the juicy young cucumbers. I “drank” twelve myself, but we had not had time to satisfy ourselves when the Prussian artillery got the range again and we had to get out of the field—those of us who could. I have heard some “cussing” during my career in the army, but I don’t think I ever listened to anything quite like the brand that accompanied our departure from that field.

After marching a considerable distance, we were billeted in barns in a small village. This was a cheering circumstance, as the farmer gave us chickens and allowed us to get vegetables to make up a real warm meal, which I can assure you was enjoyed royally. We expected to stay here some time, so we made for the barns and lay down among the hay.

I don’t think you could possibly form an idea of the utter weariness of the men or of the manner in which we were incessantly harassed. We never got a decent chance to eat, drink, or rest. The incidents of the cornfield and the cucumber patch are typical. Many men died of sheer exhaustion. When we entered the barn I was so absolutely petered out that I went to sleep almost before my body touched the hay.

We had been in the barn only about two hours when there was a great commotion. I waked up half suffocated, but I didn’t care. Somebody kicked me in the ribs as I was turning over to sleep again.

“The barn’s on fire!” he yelled.

There was an odour of paraffin. It seemed that some German agent had started the fire. Probably it was the owner of the place, using German “kultur.” Germany had left scores of such spies planted in the country, after 1871.

After the fire in the barn we got a couple of hours more sleep, then moved off again about three o’clock in the morning. We were on the Metz road going east, but did not know it until our officers informed us that we were heading toward the Franco-German frontier. They were ever optimistic and helped to lighten the burdens of men who were on the last lap by carrying sometimes the rifles of four of them at one time on their shoulders. In the afternoon we came to Coulommiers. Most of the inhabitants were leaving, and a herald—such as existed in the Middle Ages,—was going through the town beating a kettle-drum and crying to all the civilians to take everything they could carry and leave the place. But this herald was a middle-aged woman.

About two o’clock that same day, we were on the banks of a stream and the whole regiment began making preparations for a swim. Some were already in the water, but had scarcely got entirely wet when the German artillery began churning the water with shrapnel. The bodies of many of my comrades went floating down stream.

That night my company guarded a road protected by barbed-wire entanglements and lined with poplar trees; just the kind of road you so often see pictured in France or Belgium. The main body of the regiment was dug in the side of a hill overlooking this road. It was again the luck of my section to protect the road some two hundred yards in advance of the regiment. We entrenched ourselves on each side in such a manner that one could advance within ten yards without detecting our position. We placed a few strands of the barbed-wire fencing across the road a little distance ahead of us.

About midnight, I was awakened by someone tugging at me. It was the sentry. He pointed far up the road, and, as there was a certain amount of moonlight, I could see something moving between the tall poplar trees. He asked me what it was and I told him that it was our cavalry. However, I told him he should inform the section commander; and then I rolled off to sleep again.

Presently I felt a second tug at me. On looking up I found it was our sergeant; he whispered: “Be ready to spring up at a moment’s notice.” The others were already in position. In the dim light I could see the queer-shaped lance-caps that the Uhlans wore.

“Halt! Who goes there?” shouted the sentry.

“Freunden,” said a voice in reply.

With that they were almost on the barbed-wire, and we greeted them in the way such “friends” should be greeted. There was a tremendous turmoil. All but two fell into our hands. To be exact, fifteen were captured and three killed. Three of the captives were officers.

One of the officers, when searched, was found to have in his possession a novelty mirror with the photograph of a girl on the back. He made no fuss about giving up anything but the mirror. This, however, he insisted upon having back. Finally the examining officer, Major Lord George Stewart Murray, became suspicious and decided that the Boche’s sentiment was not on the level. He stripped the photograph off the back. Under it he found a thin sort of skin and, underneath that, pasted to the back of it, a paper covered with writing. He returned the mirror to the German officer, but he retained the paper; and the writing gave the staff much satisfaction.

All night long we were troubled by similar parties of Uhlans. They were evidently feeling out for an attack, but, not being able to gauge our strength, they never made it. Some of our boys crawled out from the trenches to rescue a trooper with a broken leg, and they said that only a few paces away they could not distinguish the trench or tell how many men were there. If the Uhlans had only known the facts they could have swarmed over us. In the morning we collected souvenirs from the field. One of the fellows picked up a lance with two bullet holes clean through the steel tubing shaft.

Our next stop was at Neslês. We drew up alongside a field of beets just before going into the village, and most of the men fell out of ranks and lay down alongside the road. Some were in the ploughed earth between the rows of beets. The artillery had been firing at us most of the day, but they hadn’t found the range. There were some heavy guns hammering at us, as we could tell from the explosions of the shells.

As usual, when it came time for a rest, the Germans began to locate us. One of the heaviest shells I had yet seen exploded in the field and scattered beets all over the surrounding country. A member of our company right near me was stunned for a few seconds.

Before any one had recovered himself enough to go to his aid, he sat up unsteadily, his head wobbling, his face a mass of red. A few yards behind him was his forage cap. He put his shaking hand up to his head; withdrew it, then looked at his fingers which were dripping red.

“Ah weel, lads, Ah’ve got it noo!” he lamented. “Ah’m sair-r-r-tainly din fur ’cause Ah dinna feel a theng. Ah on’y wesh Ah could ’a got ane o’ the deevils tae me credit afore this!”

By this time two or three of us had run forward and were wiping his head and face. There was no evidence of a wound. Then suddenly some one roared with laughter. The man was covered with the red juice of beets and was entirely unhurt. He had only been stunned. This is the way Mars jests. His humour is always mixed with grimness.

We learned that we were to stop at Neslës overnight, and this, coupled with the fact that we had commenced advancing, put new enthusiasm into us.

Before we arrived there were large vineyards at each side of the road leading up a hill overlooking a beautiful little town, on the south bank of the Petit Morin River. We had a few minutes’ halt within reach of the lovely French grapes, which hung most temptingly in clusters, so it was quite natural that some of the boys who were extremely thirsty and warm from the scorching sun, should partake of this inviting fruit.

Discipline in the British army is second to none; and we were commanded to observe it strictly while on the retreat. One of our orders was “not to pluck fruit,” as it came under the category of “Looting.” Very soon the few fellows who had disobeyed that order were rolling on the ground, holding their stomachs. Later we were told that the grapes on both sides of the road had been poisoned by the Germans. This was punishment enough for those who had eaten the fruit, and a lesson that every one of us “took home.”

CHAPTER FIVE

As we—the other scouts and I—advanced, firing details, which had been left behind under close cover by the Germans, did a good deal of execution amongst us. The hay-stacks, particularly, gave us a great deal of trouble. More than once, one of them would be disrupted as though by some sort of explosion from the inside, and machine guns would begin spraying our skirmishing lines. So it became an important part of our scouting operations to search all hay-stacks and farm houses. And continually we were under what, ordinarily, would be termed heavy fire.

The ground over which we were passing had been the scene of sharp fighting, earlier. We came across scores of dead Germans and a few French. In the midst of a field dotted with a particularly large number of hay-stacks was a farm house. When we were about thirty or forty yards from it and on opposite sides, we leaped up and dashed toward it as hard as we could run. It is a fact that this is the safest way for patrols to approach a house. If any of the enemy are inside, they become excited when they see men rushing toward them and are likely to open fire—instead of waiting until the scouts get inside and then killing them noiselessly. Their aim is also more uncertain at a running man than it is at one sneaking along slowly, and, most important of all, whether the scouts are killed or not, the noise of the rifle fire alarms the main body and the party in the house is detected.

Troolan (my scout partner) and I arrived at this particular farm house on a dead run without having drawn any fire or detected the least sign of life. We tried all the doors; they were locked. The windows, too, were bolted from the inside. Troolan smashed one in, got inside, and opened the door for me. We searched the building rather hurriedly and discovered no sign of any one having been there. Just as we were going out, I had a premonition that I ought to look further.

“Wait outside and watch,” I said to Troolan, “and I will take another look around.”

He posted himself outside. Very cautiously I stepped down the cellar stairs. The boards seemed to squeak and groan like a lumbering farm wagon. It was dark as pitch, but I did not dare to make a light. It would have been fatal if any one really was lurking there. Something scurried across the floor. I felt the hot blood surge under my scalp. For a second I expected to see a red flash in the utter darkness and feel a bullet smash into my body. Then I discovered that it was only a rat.

I thought I heard breathing. I stood stock still, and strained my eyes on every side till they ached as if they would burst from their sockets. I was trying to catch the reflection of some stray beam of light from the eyes of a man or the barrel of an automatic, but I do not believe that so much as a pin point of light was diffused in that whole black pit. Suddenly I almost laughed aloud, although I knew that to do so might mean instant death. The breathing that I heard was my own. Cautiously I thrust out my foot to descend another step.

There was a shout outside.

“Run to the door quickly,” Troolan was yelling.

I leaped up the stairway regardless of what might be behind me and dashed toward the kitchen door to get outside the house. Just as I did so, I saw a shadow flit along the ground past the kitchen window. Guessing where the man must be who cast it, I fired through the wooden wall of the kitchen at about the height of the average man’s breast. Then in a couple of bounds I was outside. There stood Troolan looking very much surprised and grieved when he saw me. His rifle was half drawn up to his shoulder, and he was in the attitude of getting ready to fire.

Perspiration broke out on my forehead. I realised that the shadow had been Troolan’s and from the look of him I had come very nigh to killing him.

“What the h—— was that for, ye muckle galoot?” he threw at me.

“I saw a shadow,” I said, “and let drive.”

“Ye’re an auld wife, that’s what ye’ are,” said Troolan disgustedly, “a’firin’ after shadows.”

“Never mind now,” I said, “what did you see?”

“I saw a big boche,” said my scouting partner, “or, at least, I thocht I did. Maybe I’ve been takin’ you fur him the same as you did me.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but the best plan is for you to watch this house while I go and report.”

“All right,” said Troolan. I started away. I had not gone a dozen paces when I heard scuffling behind me. I turned round and started to run back at the same instant. What I saw lent speed to my feet. The helmet of a German officer was just coming through a window. Troolan, who had evidently been concealed from the German’s view, was aiming a blow at his head with the butt of his rifle.

As usual, Troolan had lacked finesse. He had rushed so clumsily to the attack that both the officer and I had heard him. The German dodged just in time to evade the blow, and Troolan’s rifle banged the window sill.

How the boche did it, I do not know, but it seemed as though he was propelled by strong steel springs under his feet. He fairly shot out of the window like a dart from a catapult and landed on Troolan’s neck. Both men went down. I dared not fire. They were rolling over and over one another, kicking and striking with their fists. The boche was fouling Troolan in a way that would be prohibited in wrestling. I jumped into the fray and tried to find the German’s throat, but the men were so entwined that it was hard to get a hold on him. Suddenly a heavy boot struck me in the pit of the stomach, and I rolled over and over to find myself gasping for breath a dozen feet away.

Painfully I got up and staggered toward the struggling men, but I was too late to be of any use. After a particularly frantic struggle Troolan managed to get on top of his adversary, with his right arm free. His mighty fist came smashing down full in the other’s face. The German staggered to his feet, but Troolan leaped clear of him, seized his rifle, and, this time, brought the butt down with a thud on the other’s skull. Then Troolan burst into some of the most profane Scotch it has been my doubtful privilege to hear.

“What are you cursing about?” I asked him.

“I want to mak shair that Deevil’s deed!” he said.

Later that day we were relieved by other scouts.

Toward nightfall troops began to arrive on either side of us in great numbers, and dispatch riders with various insignia continually dashed up on their speedy motorcycles to our brigade headquarters. Everyone realized that we must be approaching something big, for previous to this we had been fighting, for the most part, isolated engagements. As a matter of fact, it developed that we were preparing for the Battle of the Marne.

We remained at this spot all night. At dawn, orders were given that we were to take the high ground the Germans were occupying a few miles ahead of us. Our brigade marched in skirmishing order, followed by the cavalry and artillery. We passed scores of dead—some French but the majority German. Dead horses were intermingled with the bodies of men.

We were under heavy shell fire until we descended into the shelter of a gully. Here we met a few of the French Chasseurs. Four or five farms were clustered together, and the sights we encountered in the yards and on the roads were the worst we had yet seen. Pools of congealed blood; bodies of dead soldiers partly covered with sacks and straw; the barns so filled that the feet of dead men were protruding. The Chasseurs appeared very pale and silent.

The ridge was densely covered with hazel-wood. We got the command to fix bayonets and extend into skirmishing formation. The Black Watch with the Camerons were to take the ridge, while the Coldstreams and Scots Guards were to be in reserve.

An incident occurred during the ascent of the ridge which illustrated the reckless, devil-may-care spirit of the men in our battalion in a way which impressed even me. The front-line men came upon a lot of blackberry bushes. They began plucking and eating the berries, shouting gleefully to one another to signal the discovery of an especially well-laden bush. Until the officers sternly warned them of the peril they invited by such noise and incaution, you would have thought they were schoolboys on a lark.

I was one of the scouts sent up the ridge to try to locate the position and number of the enemy and report at once. Wriggling along on my belly like a snake, I made my way foot by foot. I could hear our fellows shouting, and it rather disconcerted me as I felt they would attract the enemy’s attention, but I continued on my way nevertheless.

I never knew that so many sharp stones could be scattered in so short a distance. It seemed as though some of them were forcing themselves clean in between my ribs.

Presently I came to a hastily constructed barbed-wire entanglement at the edge of a thicket. Ahead of me was a clear rising space of about fifty yards which did not show from below. Beyond this was a plateau. Before advancing farther I peered through the thicket and scanned the crest.

Suddenly I heard a familiar, unmistakable rattling. It was the opening and closing of rifle bolts. My skin prickled all over. I knew that it meant troops getting ready to fire and I had no doubt the Germans had discovered me and were preparing to shoot. I wriggled backward a few feet into the thicket, expecting every second to hear the crash of a volley and to pass into oblivion. But the crash did not come. Evidently they had not seen me.

Under cover of the underbrush I crept forward again until I could see the helmets of German troops in the woods atop of the ridge. They outnumbered our troops. I crawled to the left until I came to a point where I could command a view of the crest, where they were in waiting, but apparently unaware of our near approach. I crawled back until I was out of sight. Then I leaped to my feet and ran as if I were once more on a cinder track in the old barrack days. Brambles tore my hands and face and lacerated my bare knees, but I did not heed them.

I had seen enough, and the sooner we could make the attack the better. Besides, they might even yet see me, and I preferred the scratching of brambles to the bite of a steel bullet.

In safety I got back to our lines. The boys could see from my excitement that something was up.

“Did you find them, Joe?” they shouted.

“Where is the adjutant?” I demanded. Somebody told me, and I hurried to him.

“How many of them are there?” he asked when I told what I had seen.

“All I can say, sir, is that they outnumber us and are waiting,” I answered.

Orders were given for an immediate attack.

I went forward again, but this time in my own place in the company, with men either side of me, and with real business ahead. We made our way in silence through the woods toward the terrace. Still the Germans did not fire. We wondered whether they were really unaware of our approach, or, just holding their fire for close range? This was the first time we had been in a big attack of this kind and we knew that bayonet work would be the end of it.

The answer to our questioning soon came. It was in the form of a burst of fire from the ridge above us. Twigs fell all around us and here and there a man dropped too.

We could not do much in the way of returning the fire, for we had not yet reached the open. The blood was pounding through my arteries. I felt much as I used to before the start of an important race. The second platoon to my right went forward, while our fire covered their advance. Crouching low, the men dashed on at full speed. Here and there one of them toppled backward. Then the platoon nearest to us advanced. It would be our turn next. We ceased firing and prepared to rush. Our lieutenant looked at the commander, whose whistle had just blown a shrill blast. He signalled for us to go forward.

Like one man, we leaped to our feet. The thin line swept out onto the open terrace. Each man had but one friend then, his rifle with the bayonet fixed.

We had arrived at the point where I had previously encountered the barbed wire. Throwing ourselves flat on the ground, we returned the enemy’s fire. After cutting the barbed-wire, we awaited orders. The word came to charge. With one mighty shout, we made for the crest. When one goes out with the bayonet he goes to kill or to be killed, but with the former in mind.

The German fire thundered out as though it had been tripled. The trees and bushes were cut as by scythes, but they were only shooting in a direction—they could not see us clearly. Up, up we went. Loose stones rattled under our feet, and went tumbling down the slope, but we picked ourselves up and pushed always forward and upward. At last we saw the Germans who were firing at us over their trenches. Our men were yelling like demons.

Then the German fire stopped as though every man had, on the instant, been struck dead. An instant later, they leaped out of their trenches, with bayonets fixed, and dashed toward us. Every man among them looked a giant. One of our boys was ahead of all the others. He was a bow-legged little fellow, and, even at that moment, he looked ludicrous with his bare knees and kilts. A big German was over him. The little fellow seemed to drop his rifle. He had caught it in both hands, close under the handle of the bayonet. He straightened up, heaving his shoulders, brought up his forearms with a jerk, and the steel blade drove through the soft spot in the German’s throat—just under the chin. The Prussian’s last cry was drowned by the fierce yell of the little bow-legged man. It was the spirit of the bayonet which made him yell like a savage.

There was no time to see what was going on around me any more. We were fighting knee to knee. I can but faintly recall the actual close fighting, but I seemed to make good use of my bayonet. Sometimes I was knocked off my feet, but the next instant I was up again. I was not thinking of what might happen to me. It was fight, fight, and keep on fighting. One seemed imbued with a superhuman strength.

One of our boys seized a German’s rifle, and wrested it from him by a trick which seemed to break his arm. A little farther away two Germans were rushing upon one man. Mechanically, I leaped into action. The butt of my rifle felled the nearest boche. Somebody knocked the rifle out of my hands. Somehow I ducked a thrust made at me and ran in on the German who made it, and smashed my fist on the point of his jaw.

They began to waver now. They did not seem to care for our company with our kilts and our steel—we whom they later learned to call the “Ladies of Hell.” (Because of our kilts.) At last they broke and ran. We were after them. A machine gun rattled away at the head of a path down which some of our boys were dashing. It almost wiped out B company before we could silence it.

Just over the crest of the ridge we came upon their combat wagons and a field gun. Three men and an officer were trying to save the gun. The men who were hitching the horses to it broke and ran. The officer did not hesitate a second to shoot them in the backs. Then he fell with one of our bullets through his head. We captured the gun.

By this time I was regaining my proper senses. A feeling of exhaustion seemed to envelop me; my legs wobbled. Then I dropped to the ground. Every bone, muscle, and nerve ached, and I felt as though I had just been through a tough wrestling match.

When we had counted up, we found that two company officers, Captain Drummond and Captain Dalgleish, had been killed. We picked up about fifty German rifles and broke them over the trunks of trees. Our casualties were one hundred and fifty killed and only God knows how many wounded.

Our prisoners amounted to about one hundred and forty. Among them was a man who had worked in London as a watchmaker. In very broken English, he asked if he could get his job back if he were sent to London. We told him that he would get a job all right, but that somebody else would see to the watchmaking.

After capturing the crest, upon looking from the far side, we could see great numbers of German cavalry and infantry in retreat. The plateau was strewn with I should judge about five hundred dead bodies of the enemy. Their horses that had been wounded were left behind—left to die. We let go a few volleys of long-range fire to hurry the boches on their way.

CHAPTER SIX

We had very little rest after the fight I have just described. We were getting down to the real business of war. It was fighting, and not the incessant retreating, which had been sapping the life out of us for weeks. You must remember, also, the weight that each man carried during all those long wearisome retreats. Each of us had his heavily plaited kilt; his pack containing great coat, flannel shirt, two pairs of socks, waterproof sheet, extra shoes, and towel; his canteen, rifle, entrenching tool, bayonet, and ammunition—the whole totalling ninety pounds weight.

Immediately after the fight, in shallow, narrow trenches, we began to bury our dead. Before the work was finished, a detachment of Uhlans fired on us, but one of our companies drove them across a rivulet and over the crest of the next ridge.

One of our pipers—Dougall McLeod was his name—had lost his chum in the fight. McLeod was a sentimental sort of chap, with little heart for the work of killing. He was sitting on the ground fastening together a couple of strips of wood to make a little cross for his chum’s grave—or rather his chum’s share of the one long grave. The tears were trickling down his grimy, bloody cheeks, and he wasn’t ashamed of them, nor of the furrows they cut in the caked dirt. It was just before he finished his work that the Uhlans opened fire. McLeod threw the loose pieces of the cross to the ground, and sprang to his place in the firing line. I had never seen the passion of hate in his eyes before. All that the Germans had made him suffer had never aroused him, but now that they interrupted him in the work of making a homely mark for his friend’s grave, he was fired by the will to kill. I was only a few paces from him in the firing line, and, with the tears still streaming down his face, I could hear him mutter every time his rifle crashed:

“Damn you! You will, will you?”

We again took to the road. All that day we marched under occasional shell fire. Along the sides of the roads, we passed the wrecks of scores of German combat wagons and supply trains. Sometimes there was a field piece amid the débris. Toward evening we heard terrific firing on our right, but we were not called to enter the engagement. Later we learned that a French division had been pretty badly cut up in running the boches out of a strong position.

Their wounded passed us on the road. You cannot imagine a more pitiful or a more noble sight. Limping along, supported by their comrades, came scores of men, whose every step was costing them agony but who smiled at us as we cheered them. Straggling down the road, as we swung along, came groups of wounded, each supporting the other as best he could. In one case in particular, a man who had been badly maimed and was using his rifle as a crutch, was also supported by a comrade who had been blinded. If there had ever been doubt in our minds as to the mettle of our allies, it was dispelled now, as the lame and the blind hour after hour filed past us.

We billeted that night at a place, the name of which sounded like Villers. I remember that a detachment of French were there before us, and a peasant pointed out to me a row of trees where they had hung fifteen Germans captured there, because, when the Uhlans had taken the town fifteen of them had brutally assaulted and outraged a farmer’s wife and his daughter, twelve years of age. The ropes were still dangling from the trees.

Volunteers were asked for, to go down and get the mail. Practically every one offered his services. To get mail from home gave the same sensation as scoring a victory, and we were all eager to do our bit. This was about 10.30 P.M. and the rain was coming down in torrents. About two miles behind us lay the mail strewn around the road. The ambulance carrying it had been struck by a shell. Our volunteer mail carriers gathered the letters up, and, needless to say, there was much excitement among us on their arrival. Nothing else was thought of for the moment except the news from home.

The next few days were uneventful. Toward evening on the thirteenth of September, I was scouting on our left flank. The German heavy guns had been keeping up a steady searching fire all day, but little damage had been done.

I had got so accustomed to the roar of the explosions that they did not bother me very much. After a while a man gets so used to the sound of a shrieking shell in the air that he can tell by instinct when one is coming his way in time to throw himself flat on the ground. I had not yet reached this stage of proficiency. A shell did come my way. How close it came I will never know, because all of a sudden I felt as though my head were bursting. I seemed to be tumbling end over end and being torn to pieces. My ear drums rang and pained excruciatingly. I thought to myself “I am dying,” and I wondered how I kept feeling a sort of consciousness although I must be already torn to bits.

Then I found myself sitting up on the ground with a man from my patrol supporting my head.

Now, this is the strange thing. I was instantly and absolutely oblivious when the shell exploded. All the sensations I have described came when I was recovering consciousness. Surgeons have told me since then that they were exactly what the shell caused when it exploded, but that my brain did not register them until my senses returned. My clothes were scorched and even my hair was singed. I do not know why I was not killed, but in a few hours I was ready for duty once more. The man who picked me up said that the shell had burst some little distance overhead. If it had struck the ground close to me, it would doubtless have sent me “west.”

The game had now been turned about. We were the pursuers. Most of the fighting was between the enemy’s rear guard and our contact patrols—until we reached the Aisne. The Huns crossed the river, but they blew up the bridges behind them. The last of the retreating troops were scarcely across before the detonators were set off.

We were held up for a while on the Aisne while our engineers constructed pontoon bridges. The Germans had the range, and they almost wiped out our entire battalion of engineers before our troops could cross.

I saw a working raft swing out into the river with about twelve men on it. A single burst of shrapnel exploded in their midst and there wasn’t a man left standing. One of them crawled to the stern and began pushing the raft toward shore with a pole but he was so weak that the current kept swinging him down a stream. A sniper got him.

The raft was drifting away. Nobody expected to see the men on it again, but, in the face of shrapnel and a nasty fire from snipers, three men, stark naked, jumped into the stream and struck out for the raft. The water around them was whipped by bullets, but our boys located the snipers and got the range and quieted them. The first man reached the raft. His hands were over the edge. He had just pushed his head and shoulders over the side when a rifle snapped and he slipped back into the water; then I saw the German who had fired at him topple out of a tree. A dozen shots must have struck him. The two other swimmers were alongside the raft now and climbed upon it. I could see that one was bleeding at the shoulder. Our men pulled the wounded man upon the raft, and brought it to shore. Their heroism saved the lives of five men who otherwise would have drifted away and probably died.

Soon our own artillery began to locate the German guns, whose fire diminished. Then our infantry began to cross the river at a dozen points. On the opposite bank was a village by the name of Bourg. Up and down hills we worked our way, forcing the enemy off the ridges. The details of the operations would not be of interest. We wanted to close with the bayonets, but the boches weren’t ready for that, and they dropped back foot by foot, keeping up a hot fire.

On this side of the river were numerous stone quarries, and in these we found tons and tons of ammunition for the heavy German guns. The type and manufacturers’ marks showed that some of it was made as far back as the Franco-Prussian war. It had been lying in caches in the quarries for years, the Prussians having bought titles to some of the land through spies who posed as Frenchmen. They had been making use of this ammunition against us. It shows how long ago the war was planned and by whom. In some of the quarries we uncovered re-enforced concrete fortification and emplacements for cannon.

Our commander, Colonel Grant Duff, was in the thickest of the fighting. I saw him distributing bandoliers of ammunition along the firing line. His men tried to make him go to the rear, but we were having a tough time to keep fire superiority, and we needed every man in the line. Suddenly Colonel Duff staggered and slouched forward on his hands and knees. The bandoliers he was carrying, scattered. Several men rushed to him but he got to his feet himself and ordered them back to their posts. An ugly red stain was spreading over his tartan riding breeches and leggings, but he staggered onward with the ammunition. He had not gone a dozen steps when both his arms flew up into the air and he fell backward. This time he did not move. He had been shot straight through the heart, and another commander of the Black Watch had gone to join the long line of heroes who had so often led this regiment to victory.

Many of our company commanders were picked off by the enemy because of their distinctive dress, their celluloid map cases affording excellent targets.

My memory of this fight is somewhat fragmentary. There are phases which are all but blanks to me. Others stand out with startling clarity.

We were advancing in skirmishing order through a wood. A pal of my old athletic days, Ned McD——, fighting a few yards from me in our scattered line, fell with a bullet through both thighs. I made him as comfortable as I could in a nook about twenty paces back from where our men, lying on their stomachs, were keeping up a steady rifle fire through the underbrush. I had hardly returned to the line when the whistle of our platoon commander sounded shrilly, and we were ordered to retire to the farther edge of the plateau, where our men could have better protection from the enemy fire. I hurriedly placed McD—— under the edge of a bank, where, at least, he would not be trampled on by men or horses.

“Don’t attempt to leave the spot, Ned,” I said. “I’ll get back to you to-night if there’s an opportunity.” The chance did come, but when I reached the spot he had disappeared. Our subsequent meeting—the story of which I shall tell—is one of my few agreeable recollections in the train of the tragedy of our campaign.

But to go back to the fight.

Soon after leaving the spot where McD—— lay, I joined in a charge on a line of hidden trenches. We were upon them, and it was steel and teeth again. I saw an officer run in under a bayonet thrust, and jab his thumbs into a German’s eyes. The boche rolled upon the ground, screaming. How long we fought, I do not know. When it was over we began to pick up the wounded. It was night. The Prussian guns were still hammering at us, and some of the shells set fire to a number of haystacks in the field where we had crossed the open. It was Hell. In the red glare of the fire the stretcher bearers hurried here and there with the dying, while others who had been placed behind the hay-stacks for shelter burned to death when the stalks caught fire. The few who could, crawled away from the fire. Those of us who were able to do so, pulled others to safety, and many a man had his hands and face badly burned, rescuing a helpless comrade.

The next morning we went at them again. In the first rush, I felt a sudden slap against my thigh. It did not feel like anything more than a blow from an open palm. I thought nothing more of it until after the fight, when some one told me I was bleeding. A bullet had struck the flesh of my thigh. The slight wound was dressed at the regimental station, and I was ready for duty again.

That night I was assigned to outpost duty between the lines. The German artillery had so covered the roads and the bridge, that for two days the supply wagons had been unable to come up. I was almost starved. My stomach ached incessantly from sheer hunger and I was weak from the bleeding of my wound. It seems terrible, looking back at it, but, during the night, while my partner watched, I crawled out and searched the dead for rations. I found none. Fifty paces from our post lay a dead artillery horse. We had to eat—or drop. What could we do? Wriggling on my belly like a snake, I drew myself toward the smelling carcass, cut off enough with my jackknife to do the section, brought it back, and we ate it.

There followed days of lying in the trenches. Every time one of us showed a head above the surface of the earth a single shot would ring out, and more than once it accomplished its mission. Two or three times I almost caught it myself. At last I made up my mind that the sniper must be in a sugar factory building which showed clearly above a ridge on the right front of our position. Jock Hunter and I volunteered to go there and investigate. Working our way under cover of a wooded patch, we reached the factory yard where we encountered an old Frenchman who seemed to be the owner of the place.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Have you seen a sniper anywhere about here?” I asked.

“No,” he answered in a surly manner, “and you get out of here.”

“We’ll get out,” I retorted, “and you’ll get with us.”

I searched the factory building from cellar to roof but wasn’t able to discover anything incriminating. I didn’t know much about sugar factories, but there was a lot of machinery in the place that didn’t look to me as if it had anything to do with sugar.

Back to our lines we went, with the supposed Frenchman making a lot of noise, but walking about two inches in front of the points of our bayonets. When he was searched we found notes to the value of fifteen thousand francs sewed in his clothes, but most important of all, there were papers upon his person which showed that he was a German spy left there by the Prussians in 1871. He held title to many acres of land, including some of the quarries where shells had been hidden.

I told the company officer of the suspicious-looking machinery in the factory. He sent us back there with a subaltern of the engineers. The three of us approached the building by different routes. Suddenly, from a narrow window in the tower of the structure, a rifle cracked, and I saw the subaltern duck behind a bush. Hunter and I each began to run toward the factory. Zip! A bullet whistled past my ear, and a few seconds later Hunter was fired at.

We all reached the place together. As the firing had been from the tower, we hurried to the upper storeys, but the subaltern saw at a glance that the machinery I had noticed was a wireless plant. Afterward we found that the numerous “lightning rods” on the factory were in reality wireless antennæ. We went to the top of the tower without finding a single soul, but in a little room in the cupola, there were a few bread crumbs scattered over the floor. A corner of the linoleum covering on the floor of this room looked a little uneven. The subaltern posted each of us in a different corner with orders to fire three rapid rounds from our rifles into different points of the floor. He himself was to discharge his revolver in a like manner. At his signal we all opened fire, splintering the floor in several places. Then we heard a groan.

“Come up here!” called the subaltern, in English. There was no answer. He repeated the command in German. Very slowly the linoleum in the corner of the room where it was uneven began to hump up. We all stood ready to fire. A trap door was lifting. Presently the corner of the floor covering was pushed back completely and a man’s face appeared. It was a very white, drawn face, and, as the shoulders rose above the floor level, we saw that the man had been struck by at least one of our bullets. His left arm hung limp by his side. We patched him up.

The officer told Hunter and myself to cut all wires, which, after some search, we found had been laid at the bottom of the walls and cunningly concealed by the grass. Then we took our prisoner back to our lines. An hour later our howitzers had demolished the factory. Up to this time, the boche artillery had been planting one shell after another on our positions, no matter how often we shifted. After the factory was destroyed we made one more move and no shells found us.

We dug ourselves into the ground, and the almost continual rain made mud holes out of the trenches. Our force was not large enough in those days to allow of the elaborate system of supports and reserves that exists to-day. The men in the firing trenches had to stay there, and there was no going back into bomb-proofs for a rest. At night we lay down all in our muddy clothes with a waterproof sheet beneath us and our greatcoats around us. The sheet didn’t do much good, because after lying in it for a while, it got pressed down into the mud and slime, which came all over the edges. Every one had a cold, and many of the men suffered from rheumatism, but no complaints were heard. It is only when things are going smoothly and “fags” are lacking that the British Tommy kicks.

Owing to the lack of supplies, the issues of cigarettes were so few and far between that the dry tea that was sent up as part rations was used to make “fags.” Tommies would roll the tea in paper in the form of cigarettes and smoke it. As much as five francs would be offered for one “Woodbine” when our supplies were exhausted. A “fag” was a most precious thing, and guarded jealously. A fellow would get into a corner, take a couple of puffs, “nip” it, then hide it away in a safe place on his person for fear of thieves in the night! In one instance, I watched a scene that would have brought forth laughter as well as pity from a civilian. One Tommy was observed in a corner finishing a half-inch butt, holding it by a pin which was stuck through it. Three others immediately pounced upon him and his treasure. After a short argument they formed a truce in the following manner: each man in rotation was to take one puff. A cockney with a Walrus moustache was last on the line, and with great sadness on his face and a sob in his voice said: “Bli’ me! w’ere the ’ell do I come in?”

Out in front of our trenches the mud was full of the bodies of the dead—mostly Germans, but a few of our men. At night, we went out to bury them, but the enemy fired on us, so we had to leave them there. The wind was blowing our way, and they knew the odours of the battlefield were as hard for us to bear as was their artillery or rifle fire. This scheme they had learned from the Russians, who practised it during their war with Japan.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Our trenches were pretty effective against rifle fire, but we had not yet learned to make them deep and narrow enough in proportion to protect us against shrapnel, which is not of much use against troops in the present-day trench. Our defence lay in leaning up close against the front wall of the trench, which caused most of the force of the shrapnel burst to go over our heads. One morning I was hugging the wall of the trench as close as I could stick, when a “coal box” burst near by. It tore down a long section of trench wall, killing a number of men. I saw the explosion and the next thing I knew I heard some one saying:

“Ah’ll bet ye’ Joe’s snuffed it noo’, puir lad.”

I stuck my head up out of what seemed to me to be a ton or two of rock and dirt and yelled: “No; not this time!”

You should have seen their faces. Some looked frightened and others relieved. In a second they began to laugh. Two or three of them helped me to my feet, and then the laughing became more boisterous.

“It isn’t so d—— funny as you think,” I said, getting a little peeved.

They turned me round and one of them held up the front part of my kilt in such a way that I could see the whole rear of the garment had been torn off. Certain portions of my anatomy were as guiltless of clothes as when I was born. A splinter of the shell, about fourteen pounds in weight, had given me a close crop. Then I had to laugh too, though I was somewhat battered and sore, but that night it wasn’t so funny. I was almost frozen while on sentry go, and the next day it was just as bad.