You know that von Kluck's army entered Brussels on 20th August. An American writer who fell in with an advance division tells us that the Germans marched at a very rapid pace towards the Franco-Belgian frontier to meet the Allies. To keep up with the column he was forced to move at a steady trot. The men did not bend the knees, but keeping the legs straight, shot them forward with a quick, sliding movement as though they were skating or ski-ing.[16]Many of them fell by the wayside, but they were not permitted to lie there, but were lifted to their feet and flung back into the ranks. The halts were frequent, and so exhausted were the poor fellows that, instead of standing at ease, they dropped to the road as though they had been struck with a club. It was these forced marches which brought von Kluck's army so rapidly to the right wing of the Allies.
While our soldiers from Condé to Binche were busy digging trenches and gun-pits, and clearing their front of cover, they could hear away to the right the dull roar of cannon. Fighting was going on not only at Namur but along the Sambre. You know that von Buelow's army was marching along the north bank of the Meuse towards Namur, and that the Saxon army was moving towards the same place along the southern bank. On the evening of the day on which the Germans entered Brussels the first shots were fired at the fortress. It was a sultry evening, and behind the screen of haze the great howitzers were placed in position. They began to fire on the Belgian trenches to the north-east of the city, and all night continued to bombard them with great accuracy. Any man who lifted his head wasimmediately hit. The guns were three miles away, so the Belgians had no chance of rushing on the foe with the bayonet as they had done at Liége. They were forced to wait and suffer. After enduring ten hours of bursting shrapnel, which killed large numbers of them, they were obliged to withdraw, and the Germans pushed within the ring of forts and took up a position on the ridge of St. Marc north of the city.[17]
Meanwhile two of the eastern forts had fallen. Upon the fort just to the south of the Meuse the Germans guns rained shells at the rate of twenty a minute, and it was only able to fire ten shots in reply. The shells wrecked concrete and turrets alike, and nothing could resist them. The fort directly to the north of the river held out longer; but when seventy-five of its garrison had been slain, it too was forced to yield. At the same time the southern line of forts was fiercely bombarded, and after an attack of two hours three of them were silenced, and a German force was pushed across the Meuse into the southern part of the angle between that river and the Sambre. All day long an infantry battle raged, and the Belgians hoped against hope that the French would come to their assistance.
Next morning, 22nd August, five thousand French troops, mostly Turcos, arrived from the west, but they were too late and too few to save the fortress. It was a black, dread day for the Allies. The skies were darkened by an eclipse of the sun, and the people of Namur were in a state of panic. German aeroplanes flew over the place and dropped bombs, which killed many of the inhabitants and fired their houses. The heavens thundered, the great guns roared, and Namur fell.
When the commander, General Michel, saw that he could no longer hold out, he tried to call in the troops from the forts and march them westward, in the hope that they might join their comrades beneath the shelter of the forts at Antwerp. Traitors or spies, however, cut his telephone wires, and he was only able to rally a portion of them for the retreat. Two Belgian regiments hacked a way through the Germans who blocked their road, and managed to join the French and reach Rouen; where they took ship to Ostend, and then joined the main Belgian army at Antwerp.
On Sunday afternoon, 23rd August, the Germans marched into Namur singing their national songs and shouting in triumph. Next day von Buelowentered, and with him was the new Governor of Belgium, Field-Marshal von der Goltz, who was described by one of the townsfolk as "an elderly gentleman covered with orders, buttoned in an overcoat up to his nose, above which gleamed a pair of enormous glasses."
The Belgians made their last stand between the forts to the north-west of the city. They held out until the morning of Tuesday, 25th August, when they left their trenches and moved into the woods on the north bank of the Sambre. Here they were surrounded, and were obliged to surrender. Only about 12,000 out of the 26,000 men who attempted to hold the fortress escaped. Large quantities of guns and stores had to be abandoned, and these fell into the hands of the Germans.
I have already told you that Namur was considered so strong that it could defy attack for a long time. It fell, as we have seen, very rapidly. The first shot was fired on the evening of 20th August; by the next night five or six forts had fallen; on the 23rd the Germans entered the city, and two days later every fort was in ruins.
Now we are able to understand the terrible peril of the Allies. The French line along the Meuse and Sambre could only be held so long as Namur was able to resist. Now that it had fallen the line was broken, and a million men were on the verge of disaster.
While the German howitzers were battering down the forts at Namur a fierce battle was raging round about Charleroi, on the Sambre, some fifteen miles to the east. Those who remember the story of the battle of Waterloo will recollect that Napoleon's armies crossed the Sambre at Charleroi on their way to the famous battlefield. Like Mons, Charleroi is a place of coal mines, iron foundries, and glassworks.
Less than ten miles to the north-east of Charleroi is the village of Ligny,[18]where Napoleon beat the Germans under Blücher on June 16, 1815, and forced them to retreat. On the same day Wellington beat Marshal Ney at Quatre Bras,[19]which lies a few miles to the north-west of Ligny; but because Blücher had retreated he was obliged to fall back to the field of Waterloo, where, as you know, he was joined by the Prussians, and an end was made of Napoleon. It was over this historicground that von Buelow's army advanced towards Charleroi.
Not until late in March 1915 did the French lift the veil and give us a glimpse of what happened. We are told that General Joffre's plan was, in the first place, to hold and dispose of the enemy's centre, and afterwards to throw all his available forces on the left flank of the Germans. On Friday, 21st August, the French centre attacked with ten army corps. On the next day it failed, and the French suffered a severe defeat. They frankly confess that their officers and troops were unequal to the task imposed on them, that they were imprudent under fire, that the divisions were ill engaged, that they deployed rashly and fled hastily, and that the lives of the men were thrown away too early in the struggle. During the fighting the Zouaves and Turcos behaved most gallantly. Twice they cleared the town of Charleroi at the point of the bayonet, but all their efforts were unavailing. Five times the town was captured and recaptured, and every time it changed hands it was fiercely shelled. By Saturday evening it was in the hands of the Germans, who, after suffering great losses, crossed the Sambre.
Meanwhile another fierce fight was going on farther east along the line of the Meuse. On Saturday morning a German army, which had advanced through the Northern Ardennes, crossed the Meuse into the angle between that river and the Sambre, where, you will remember, the Germans had already gained a footing. This new force attacked the right flank of the French, and began to work round to their rear, so as to threaten the line of retreat. With von Buelow pressing hard on the front, and the Saxon army pressing on the right and rear, the French in the angle between the rivers were forced to give way, and in order to save themselves from destruction were obliged to retire to the south. So rapid and confused was this retreat that the French staff neglected to send news of the disaster to Sir John French until the afternoon of next day. He thought that the French line was still holding out on his right; but as a matter of fact he was without any support in that direction, and was left, as the soldiers say, "in the air." Further, von Buelow was now able to spare some of his right-wing troops and send them to help von Kluck, who was about to swoop down on the British line.
It is a peaceful Sunday morning; the sun is shining and the bells are ringing. The Belgians in Mons and the surrounding mining villages are flocking towards their churches; but in the British lines our soldiers are hard at work in their shirt-sleeves deepening the trenches and making ready to meet the threatened attack. As the morning wears on a German Taube[20]comes gliding high over the trenches like a huge vulture seeking its prey. It circles round and round, and more than one enterprising "Tommy" discharges his rifle at it. Now a British aeroplane ascends to give it battle; but the Taube makes a long curve northward, and disappears in rapid flight. Meanwhile our own airmen and cavalry scouts are coming in with the news that large numbers of the enemy are moving through the green woods towards the centre of the line, and that towards Binche and Condé other columns are on the march.
Sir John French assembled his commanders at six in the morning on August 23, and explained to them what he understood to be General Joffre's plan. He knew nothing of what had happened on his right, and he believed that one, or at most two, of the enemy's army corps, with perhaps one cavalry division, were on his front. He had no idea that the enemy outnumbered him by at least two to one, and that they were attempting to envelop him by attacking his exposed flanks.
A private in the 1st Royal West Kent Regiment tells us how the battle began. He says: "It was Sunday, 23rd August, that we were at Mons, billeted in a farmyard, and we were having a sing-song, and watchingthe people coming home from church. At about 12.30 an orderly had gone down to draw dinners when an aeroplane appeared overhead, throwing out some black powder. After this shrapnel began to burst, acquainting us with the fact that the Germans were in the vicinity. All was confusion and uproar for the moment, because we were not armed, and our shirts and socks were out to wash, that being the only chance we had to get them washed. It did not take us long, however, to get in fighting trim and go through the town of Mons to the scene of operations, which was on the other side of a small canal that adjoined."
The British were soon standing to arms in their position along the whole twenty-five miles of the battle-line. Hardly had they thrust the cartridges into their rifles before the terrible thunder of the German guns began. These guns were massed just outside the southern edge of the woods, behind railway embankments, roadside trees, hedgerows, and the raised towing-paths of the willow-fringed canals. The thunder of the cannonade speedily showed that the enemy was in far greater force than had been supposed. Not, however, for some hours did Sir John French and his staff realize that they wereeverywhereoutnumbered.
The guns were booming, but there was no sign of the enemy. The front seemed empty of men, but an observer would have seen soft, fleecy clouds hanging above the British trenches—a sign that shrapnel was bursting over them, and that a deadly flail of iron bullets was beating down upon them. Our soldiers, who had learned to take cover in South Africa, lay close, and waited, whiling away the time by joking and by playing marbles with the shrapnel bullets that fell among them. At first the aim of the enemy's artillery was not very good, but speedily their aeroplanes came circling over the trenches, and by throwing down smoky bombs revealed their whereabouts. Then they made very accurate shooting, and many of our men were hit. Meanwhile our artillery began to reply, and more than once silenced a battery of the enemy.
Our officers knew full well that the roar of the guns was the signal for the German infantry to advance. For a time nothing could be seen of them, for they took cover well, and their bluish gray uniforms seemed to melt into the leafy background. Our officers, who were eagerly scanning the landscape with field-glasses, only saw them when they began to open fire with rifles and machine guns.
The Germans believed that if they kept up a fierce artillery fire on our trenches our men would become so terrified that they would scuttle from their burrows like rabbits at the approach of a ferret. They did not then know of what stuff British soldiers are made. No fighters in the world are so cool and dogged; none can take such severe punishment without flinching, or wait so patiently for the right moment to advance.
And now the blue-gray masses of the Germans came into full view. They made desperate attacks near Binche, where, owing to the retirement of the French, the flank was exposed to a turning movement. Some of the troops who were to help in holding this part of the line had only just arrived, after a long and trying march under a hot sun, and were busy "digging themselves in" while the shrapnel was bursting over them.
When the infantry of the enemy began to appear our soldiers had three surprises. In the sham battles which they had fought at Aldershot or on Salisbury Plain they had learned to fire at men moving forward in a thin, extended line, with eight or ten paces between them. To their amazement they saw the Germans coming on in dense masses, as though theywere parading in the streets of Potsdam. Our men grasped their rifles and waited until the enemy came within six or seven hundred yards of them. On rolled the Germans, singing their national songs, and believing that they could sweep the British out of their trenches by sheer weight of numbers. At last the word was given, and a tornado of rifle and machine-gun fire crashed down upon the dense masses.
Our men fired as steadily as though they were shooting at targets in time of peace. Not a shot was wasted; every bullet found its billet. "The Germans were in solid square blocks, standing out sharply against the skyline," wrote Sergeant Loftus, "and you couldn't help hitting them. It was like butting your head against a stone wall." Before the rapid fire and sure aim of the British the hosts of the enemy went down in heaps. "It was like cutting hay," said a private. In one place there was a breastwork of German dead and wounded five feet high, and our soldiers had to leave their trenches in order to see the foe.
The second surprise was the poor shooting of the German infantry. They fired as they marched, with their rifles at their hips. Though thousands of their bullets whizzed by, very few of them found a mark. "They can't shoot for nuts," said one Tommy; "they couldn't hit a haystack." "They couldn't hit the gas works at Mons," said another. "If they had, I wouldn't be here."
The third surprise was the vast numbers of the enemy that made the attack. Our first line did not consist, at any time, of more than 80,000 men, and against them von Kluck hurled at least 150,000 men, without counting the masses of cavalry which were moving towards the space between our left at Condé and the town of Tournai. Though the Germans were shot down in thousands, they continued to roll on like the waves of an incoming tide. "It was like the crowd leaving a football ground on a cup-tie day," was the description of one of our soldiers. For every five men which the French and the British had in the field in the early days of the war the Germans had eight.
Against these terrible odds our men fought stubbornly. Again and again the dense masses of the Germans pressed towards them, and as they did so a sheet of flame flickered along the line of British trenches, and they were beaten down like a field of standing wheat before a hailstorm. But no sooner were they swept to earth than their supports appeared, only tomeet the same fate. Our men grew sick with slaughter. In some places the crowded ranks of the enemy managed to come close to the British trenches. Then our men leaped forward with a cheer and drove with the bayonet through and through the ranks, until the survivors turned and fled, followed by the pitiless fire of Maxims and field guns.
One important feature of the attack was the very large number of machine guns used by the Germans. They were mounted on low sledges, so that they could be rapidly brought into the firing line and worked by men lying down. It seemed in these early days of the war as though the enemy was going to do the real fighting with artillery and machine guns, and that his infantry were only to act as supports.
You already know that von Kluck was throwing his main strength chiefly on the British right, but there were also furious fights along the canal towards Condé, where our men were holding the bridges. Frenzied attacks were made on these bridges, but they were stubbornly held. When, however, the overwhelming numbers of the enemy appeared, our troops were withdrawn to the south bank, and orders were given to blow up the bridges and the barges in the canal. The engineers did the work with the coolest courage in the face of a deadly fire.
A hundred deeds of gallantry were done that day. One bridge was held by a devoted company of the Scottish Borderers. When they saw that it must be abandoned, a sergeant and three men dashed on to it to fire the fuse. The three men dropped in their tracks, and the sergeant went on alone. He hacked the fuse short and fired it; but with the destruction of the bridge he too was destroyed.
Foiled at the bridges, the enemy now attempted to cross the canal by means of pontoons. Our guns were trained on them, and an awful scene of slaughter and destruction began. Ten separate times the Germans managed to throw their pontoons over the water, and ten separate times the guns of the British smashed them to fragments.
Stubbornly as our men were fighting, the terrible pressure of the Germans could not be resisted. About three o'clock Sir Philip Chetwode's cavalry brigade, which had been guarding the flank, had to be withdrawn; whereupon the enemy occupied Binche. Sir Douglas Haig then drew in hisright, and slowly fell back to a long swell of ground south of the village of Bray. You know that the British line had been almost straight; the retirement of the 1st Army Corps swung the right half of the line towards the south, so that there was a sharp angle between it and the 2nd Army Corps, holding the line of the Mons-Condé canal. The British were now in the same sort of dangerous position as the French when they held the angle between the Meuse and the Sambre. General French saw at once that his men in Mons were exposed to attacks from the front and the flanks, and that they were in peril of being cut off; so he directed the commander of that part of the line "to be careful not to keep the troops on this salient too long, but, if threatened seriously, to draw back the centre behind Mons."
Hardly had this message been sent off before a startling telegram from General Joffre reached General French. It gave him news which he ought to have received hours before, and made his gallant stand quite unavailing. It told him that Namur had fallen on the previous day; that the 5th French Army and the two reserve divisions on his right were in retreat; that the passages of the Sambre between Charleroi and Namur were in the hands of the enemy; that at least three German army corps were moving on the front of his position, while another was making a wide turning movement round his left by way of Tournai. Probably at this time some 200,000 Germans were about to attack Sir John French's 80,000. All this meant that the little British army, though it had done, and could still do, miracles of valour, was in peril of being cut off, enveloped, and destroyed. There was nothing for it but to hold on until nightfall, and then retreat. You can imagine the bitter disappointment of our men, who now knew that they were more than a match for the Germans.
A sergeant tells us that all day long the British defied every attempt of the enemy to dislodge them from their trenches. "After the last attack," he says, "we lay down in our clothes to sleep as best we could; but long before sunrise we were called out, to be told that we had got to abandon our position. Nobody knew why we had to go; but like good soldiers we obeyed without a murmur."
The account of the Battle of Mons which you have just read has been built up from two main sources of information. First, and most important, is the dispatch of Sir John French. It is a plain, business-like statement, giving a broad outline of the manner in which his troops were disposed, and relating in proper order the chief features of the struggle, but not telling us much about the details of the fighting. Then come the accounts which the soldiers who took part in the battle have given of their experiences. Of course each of these soldiers only saw but a very small portion of the battle, and they knew very little of the "moves" which their commanders were making; but it is from them that we hear those details which give life and colour to the story. In this chapter you are going to read some accounts of various incidents in the battle as told by those who fought at Mons on the 23rd day of August 1914.
Here is the story told by a Gordon Highlander named Smiley. He drew a little diagram to illustrate the fighting which he saw, and I reproduce it on the next page in order that you may the more easily follow his story. You will notice that he and his comrades held a trench to the south of Mons.
"We marched out of our billets at 4 a.m. We marched up to No. 1 and wheeled to the right, which fetched us on the main Paris road (No. 4.4.4.4), with Mons itself somewhat half-left on our rear. We immediately set about clearing the foreground of willows, beans, wheat, and anything which gave head cover. About 10 a.m. we had (except buildings) a clear rifle range of quite two thousand yards. We then dug our trenches, and much labour and love we put into them.
"The ball opened at 11.30 a.m. by a terrible artillery duel by the Germans over our trenches to No. 5. This went on for some hours, until a movement of infantry was seen at No. 6. This movement was evidently intended for the Gordons, as you will see that had they managed to reach the wood in front of us (No. 7) our position would have been made untenable by hidden infantry and well-served artillery, who could have flanked us by sheer weight of numbers.
"However, we opened on them at No. 6 with a terrific Maxim fire. They advanced in companies of quite one hundred and fifty men in files five deep. Guess the result. We could steady our rifles on the trench and take deliberate aim. The first company were simply blasted away by a volley at seven hundred yards, and in their insane formation every bullet was almost sure to find two billets. The other companies kept advancing very slowly, using their dead comrades as cover; but they had absolutely no chance, and at about 5 p.m. their infantry retired.
"We were still being subjected to a terrible artillery fire. But we had time to see what was happening on our left flank (1, 2, 3). The Royal Irish Regiment had been surprised and fearfully cut up, and so, too, had the Middlesex, and it was found impossible for our B and C Companies to reinforce them. We (D Company) were one and a half miles away, and were ordered to proceed to No. 2 and relieve the Royal Irish as much as possible. We crept from our trenches and crossed to the other side of the road, where we had the benefit of a ditch and the road camber[21]as cover. We made most excellent progress until one hundred and fifty yards from No. 1. At that distance there was a small white house flush withthe road standing in a clearance. Our young sub.[22]was leading, and safely crossed the front of the house. Immediately the Germans opened a cyclone of shrapnel at the house. They could not see us, but I guess they knew the reason why troops would or might pass that house. However, we were to relieve the R.I.'s, and astounding as it may seem, we passed that house, and I was the only one to be hit. Even yet I am amazed at our luck.
"By this time dusk had set in, four villages were on fire, and the Germans had been and were shelling the hospitals. We managed to get into the R.I.'s trench, and beat off a very faint-hearted Uhlan attack on us. About 9 p.m. came our orders to retire. What a pitiful handful we were against that host, and yet we held the flower of the German army at bay all day!"
Another soldier who was present in this part of the battlefield says:—
"We were digging trenches, and were totally unaware that the enemy was near us, when all of a sudden shells came dropping all around, and the Germans bore down on us. One of the Middlesex companies was not at that time equipped in any way, with the result that they were terribly cut up. Then I witnessed what a real Britisher is made of. One of the sergeants of the Middlesex, instead of holding up hands and begging for mercy, like the Germans do, fought furiously with his fists, downing two Germans with successive blows. Other members of the Middlesex followed their sergeant's example. Later on a German sergeant-major who was taken prisoner, on viewing our numbers, said, 'Had we been aware that there were so few of you, not one of you would have escaped.'"
In scores of soldiers' letters we find references to the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. One young private wrote as follows to his father, who is a gardener: "You complained last summer, dad, of the swarm of wasps that destroyed your fruit. That will give you an idea of how the Germans came for us." Another man writes: "It looked as if we were going to be snowed under. The mass of men who came on was an avalanche, and every one of us must have been trodden to death, if not killed byshells or bullets, had not our infantry charged into them on the left wing, not five hundred yards from the trench I was in." A non-commissioned officer also refers to the odds against which our men struggled: "No regiment ever fought harder than we did, and no regiment has ever had better officers; they went shoulder to shoulder with their men. But you cannot expect impossibilities, no matter how brave the boys are, when one is fighting forces twenty to thirty times as strong." "They are more like flies," said another man: "the more you kill the more there seem to be."
Here is the story of Lance-Corporal M'Auslan of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who was fighting on the Mons-Condé line. He says: "I was up in the engagement before Mons on the Saturday. We marched thirty miles, and had an engagement with the enemy, and fought a rearguard action over twenty miles for twenty-four hours. The canal at Mons must be full of German dead now. We were working two nights to prevent them crossing the canal, and we mowed them down like corn. The D Company of our regiment was cut up in about ten minutes, and Captain Ross and Captain Young lost their lives. I was with Captain Ross when he got bowled over. It was not the rifle fire that hurt us—they could not hit us at fifty yards—but it was the shrapnel fire that caused the damage. The German big gun fire was good, but their rifle fire was rotten. The aeroplanes did all the piloting. They gave the Germans the range of our guns, and they shelled us pretty successfully; but we brought down two Zeppelins and an aeroplane in the first two days of the battle."
ATimescorrespondent tells us that he was much impressed by the coolness and dash of our men, and their utter indifference to danger. "I shall never forget," he writes, "the admirable reply given by an English soldier, wounded in the hand, whom I found sitting by the roadside outside Mons, wearing an air of consternation. I began to talk to him, and asked him if his wound was hurting him. 'It's not that,' he said, with a doleful shake of the head, 'but I'm blessed if I haven't been and lost my pipe in that last charge!' I gave him mine, and he was instantly comforted."
Here is a fine story of the fights for the bridges at Condé where thecanal joins the river Scheldt; it is told by Private W. E. Carter of the 2nd Manchester Regiment:—
"To deliver their attacks it was necessary for the enemy to cross two bridges. The officer in command of the Royal Engineers ordered a non-commissioned officer to swim the canal and the river, and set fuses under both bridges. He reached the farther bank in safety, and on returning he set a fuse under the river bridge. When making for 'home' one of the enemy's big guns fired on him, and blew away one of his arms at the shoulder. Another member of the same corps entered the water and assisted him to land. When the Germans had marched over the first bridge it was blown up, leaving their ammunition carts on the other side. Then the second bridge was blown up, and a German force of 25,000 was placed at our mercy. A desperate fight followed, the Germans being left with no ammunition but what they carried. They struggled heroically to build a bridge with the object of getting their ammunition carts across, but every time this improvised bridge was destroyed by our artillery fire. Though they were thus trapped, the Germans held their ground very stubbornly."
The following is an account of how some of our men were trapped. A wounded officer says: "We were guarding a railway bridge over a canal. My company held a semicircle from the railway to the canal. I was nearest the railway. A Scottish regiment completed the semicircle on the right of the railway to the canal. The railway was on a high embankment running up to the bridge, so that the Scottish regiment was out of sight of us.
"We held the Germans all day, killing hundreds, when about 5 p.m. the order to retire was given. It never reached us, and we were left all alone. The Germans therefore got right up to the canal on our right, hidden by the railway embankment, and crossed the railway. Our people had blown up the bridge before their departure. We found ourselves between two fires, and I realized we had about two thousand Germans and a canal between us and our friends. We decided to sell our lives dearly. I ordered my men to fix bayonets and charge, which the gallant fellows did splendidly; but we got shot down like ninepins. As I was loading my revolver after giving the order to fix bayonets I was hit in the rightwrist. I dropped my revolver; my hand was too weak to draw my sword. I had not got far when I got a bullet through the calf of my right leg and another in my right knee, which brought me down.
"The rest of my men got driven round into the trench on our left. The officer there charged the Germans and was killed, and nearly all the men were either killed or wounded. I did not see this part of the business, but from all accounts the gallant men charged with the greatest bravery. Those who could walk the Germans took away as prisoners. I have since learnt from civilians that around the bridge five thousand Germans were found dead, and about sixty English. These sixty must have been nearly all my company, who were so unfortunately left behind."
One of the finest features of our army is the admiration of the rank and file for their officers, and the equally sincere admiration of the officers for their men. In letters home they are constantly praising each other. A cavalry officer writes in his diary: "Can't help feeling jolly proud to command such a magnificent body of men. Hope to goodness I am capable of doing the lads full justice. Our menAREplaying thegame;" while a private pays the following striking tribute to his officer: "You know I have often spoken of Captain ——, and what a fine fellow he was. There was no braver man on the field. He got knocked over early with a piece of shell which smashed his leg. He must have been in great pain, but kneeling on one knee, he was cheerful, and kept saying, 'My bonnie boys, make sure of your man.' When he was taken away on the ambulance he shouted, 'Keep cool, and mark your man.'"
During the hot hours of the fierce fighting our men were frequently very thirsty, and longed for a cooling drink. Over and over again peasant women came up to the trenches with water and fruit for the parched and wearied men. They showed the most wonderful courage in approaching the firing line, and our soldiers were most grateful to them. One man wrote home to his mother: "I can assure you they are the bravest souls I have ever met." All honour to these noble women for their deeds of mercy in the day of battle.
The following stories give us a capital idea of the high spirits and undaunted gaiety of our men under fire. A party of British infantry were defending a café near Mons. As often as the Germans attacked the place they were driven back, though big holes were gaping in the walls and the place was rapidly becoming a ruin. There was an automatic piano in the café, and every time the Germans appeared, one soldier would say to another, "Put a penny in the slot, Jock, and give them some music to dance to." Each time the enemy attacked this was done, and the "band" struck up.
A wounded lancer tells us that when the Germans bore down on his trench the men were singing "Hitchy Koo." "Before we were half through with the chorus," he says, "the man next to me got a wound in the upper part of his arm. But he sang the chorus to the finish, and did not seem to know that he was hit until a comrade on the other side said, 'Don't you think you'd better have it bound up? It's beginning to make a mess.'"
Captain Buchanan Dunlop, who was wounded at Mons, tells a splendid story to illustrate the pluck and undaunted spirit of our men. He says: "I wastalking to an officer of my own regiment in town yesterday. He was also wounded, and he told me about a fight in which one of his men lying just in front of him under a heavy shell fire turned to him and said, 'Sir, may I retire?' 'Why?' asked the officer. 'Sir,' replied the man, 'I have been hit three times.'"
Every boy and every girl who reads these pages has heard of the Victoria Cross, the highest award of valour known to the British army. Perhaps you have seen a man who has won it. If so, I am sure that your eyes shone as you looked at him, for there is no nobler sight in all the world than a man who is supremely brave. The Victoria Cross is a simple Maltese cross of bronze, worth about fourpence halfpenny, and it is so called because it was first instituted by Queen Victoria in the year 1856.
"Her cross of valour to her worthiest;No golden toy with milky pearls besprent,But simple bronze, and for a warrior's breastA fair, fit ornament."
"Her cross of valour to her worthiest;No golden toy with milky pearls besprent,But simple bronze, and for a warrior's breastA fair, fit ornament."
The special glory of the Victoria Cross is that any soldier can win it, be he general or private, son of a peer or son of a scavenger. It is given "For Valour," and for valour only. So highly honourable is it that, no matter what other distinctions a man may possess, the letters "V.C." come first after his name. It is suspended by a red ribbon if worn on the breast of a soldier, and by a blue ribbon if worn by a sailor. It carries with it a pension of ten pounds a year, which may be increased if the possessor cannot earn a livelihood.
Let me tell you something of the men who did such glorious deeds of valour at Mons that they were afterwards awarded the Victoria Cross.
Captain Theodore Wright, of the Royal Engineers, was engaged in blowing up one of the bridges over the Mons-Condé canal. While preparing the bridge for destruction he was wounded in the head; but he stuck to his work, and refused to retire. The fuse failed to explode the charge, and then, wounded as he was, he dashed forward under a very heavy fire and fixed another fuse, which this time did its work and blew the bridge tofragments. On 16th November he was awarded the Victoria Cross; but, alas! he had then been dead two months. He was killed while assisting wounded men into shelter.
Lieutenant Maurice James Dease, of the 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, was commander of the machine-gun section at Mons. Though he was badly wounded two or three times, he refused to leave his guns, and kept them in action until all his men were shot. He, too, died of his wounds, and the coveted Victoria Cross was handed to his relatives, who cherish it, you may be sure, with mingled pride and sorrow.
Corporal Charles Ernest Garforth, of the 15th Hussars, also won the Victoria Cross on that dread day at a place about three miles south of Mons. His squadron was trapped, and the only road of escape was barred by entanglements of barbed wire. He volunteered to go forward and cut the wire, and this he did while hundreds of bullets flew about him. Thanks to his dauntless courage, his squadron was able to reach safety. Twice later he did equally heroic deeds, and never was the coveted cross more splendidly won.
Lance-Corporal Charles Alfred Jarvis, 57th Field Company, Royal Engineers, showed great gallantry at Jemappes on the canal to the west of Mons. He worked on a bridge for one and a half hours in full view of the enemy, who kept up a heavy fire upon him. For a time he had the assistance of his comrades, but finally he sent them to the rear, and then all alone fired the charges which brought down the bridge. For this deed he was rightly enrolled in that glorious band of heroes who have wrought and fought and died to make us inheritors of deathless fame.
While our hard-pressed troops are retreating from Mons before overwhelming numbers of the enemy, we must turn to what is called the Eastern theatre of war and see what is happening there. Before, however, I describe the actual fighting, I must tell you something about Russia and the Russian army.
You probably know that Russia is not only equal in extent to half Europe, but stretches right across the northern part of the continent of Asia to the waters of the Pacific Ocean. This vast empire actually covers one-seventh of all the land on the globe. Unlike the British Empire, it is continuous; you may travel from one end of it to the other by rail. You will get some idea of the tremendous railway journey involved when I tell you that the distance from the old city of Warsaw on the river Vistula to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan is about 6,200 miles—that is, about two-fifths of the circumference of the world at the latitude of London.
Naturally you will expect this vast empire to be inhabited by vast numbers of people. In the year 1912 it was estimated that there were more than 171 millions of people under the sway of the Tsar—that is, more than one in ten of all the people on earth. I have already told you of the extraordinary variety of races which dwell beneath the Union Jack; there is almost as great a variety of peoples in the Russian Empire. There are, for example, thirty different races in the Caucasus alone. The bulk of the inhabitants, however, are of Slav race, and are descended from a people who, ages ago, entered Europe from Asia, and gradually conquered the land and settled in it. What are known as theGreat Russians form the strongest and toughest race in the whole empire. They are Slavs who in early times intermingled with the Finns and set up the kingdom of Moscow. These Great Russians gradually succeeded in enlarging their borders, until their territory stretched to the Crimea and Turkestan on the south and south-east, to Manchuria in the far east, and to Germany in the west. The Great Russians are now the largest and most important of all the Russian peoples, and they occupy the bulk of the country.
The descendants of the races and tribes which the Great Russians subdued still exist, and they differ as widely from their conquerors as a northern Frenchman differs from a southern Frenchman. One of these conquered races consists of the White Russians, who represent some of the earliest Slav colonists, and live near the sources of the Niemen, the Dwina, and the Dnieper in the south-west of the country. Most of the people of the south, however, are Little Russians. They speak a dialect of their own, love dance and song, and are less fond of work than the peoples of Northern Russia.
Amongst other races in Russia are the Poles, a Slav people with quite a separate language. In Chapter III. of our first volume I told you that in the days of the English King Edward III. Poland was an important and flourishing kingdom. I also told you how the sovereigns of Prussia, Russia, and Austria conspired to seize portions of this kingdom, and how it was gradually gobbled up until the Poles, like the Jews, had no land which they could call their own. From that day to this they have yearned for the time when their old kingdom might be restored to them. On the 15th day of August, when the war was in full swing, the Tsar addressed the Poles as follows:—
"Poles! The hour has sounded when the sacred dream of your fathers and grandfathers may be realized. A century and a half has passed since the living body of Poland was torn in pieces; but the soul of the country is not dead. It continues to live, inspired by the hope that there will come for the Polish people an hour of resurrection and of brotherly friendship with Great Russia. The Russian army brings you the solemn pledge of this friendship which wipes out the frontiers dividing the Polish peoples, and unites them under the sceptre of the Russian Tsar. Under this sceptre Poland will be born again, free in her religion and her language. You will be granted Home Rule under the protection of Russia.