Chapter VI: Fights to a Finish

Those were stirring words which the Colonel of the Manchester Regiment addressed to his men when they were surprised at Douai by very superior numbers: "No surrender, lads! First you have your rifles, then your bayonets, then the butts of your rifles, then your fists!"

Even with their fists our soldiers, on one occasion, made the Germans pay for their treachery. "They attacked our position in very strong numbers, but we kept them at bay until they played a trick on us that cost us dear, but not so dear as it cost themselves. They got to two hundred yards of our trenches, then the fire was so hot for them that they hoisted the white flag. Of course we stopped firing, and some got up to go out and take them prisoners, but as soon as they got up to them they opened a pitiless fire on our fellows. For a moment our chaps were taken by surprise, but it was the sight of a lifetime to see them a moment later. Straight into the German masses they sprang, and with their bayonets, butts of their rifles, and even their fists, they set about them. The slaughter was terrible. Soon the Germans had had enough of Tommy Atkins when his temper is roused. They broke and fled in utter disorder. You ought to have heard them yell; it was like a wild beast show let loose."

A company of the Middlesex Regiment were also handy with their fists. Alas! these were not sufficient. They were digging trenches near Mons when a mass of Germans, who seemed to come from nowhere, bore down upon them. Bayonets in hand, they rushed upon our men, who were quite unprepared in the matter of equipment, but the sergeant of the company set the lead by the use of his fists, and "downed two Germans with two successive blows." The whole company followed their sergeant's lead, but they were mowed down like grass.

Here is a typical Irish description from a Munster Fusilier: "The Germans seem to think that you can catch Irish soldiers with fly-papers, for they just stepped up the other day and called on us to surrender, as bold as you like and bolder. We didn't waste any words in telling them to go about their business, but we just grabbed hold of our bayonets and signed to them to come on if they wanted anything, but they didn't seem in any great hurry to meet us. After a bit they opened fire on us with a couple of maxims, but we fixed bayonets and went for the guns with a rush. They appear to be delicate boys indeed, and can't stand very much rough usage with the bayonet. We got their guns. Their cavalry had a try at getting them back later on, but we let them have it with bayonet and rifle, and they got sick of it altogether before long. A big party of them tried the other day to cut off four companies of the Royal Irish Regiment advancing to relieve a French force hard pressed on our left. The Germans lined up along the road just like the police at home trying to turn back a procession that wasn't approved of. The Royal Irish boys didn't take the least heed until they were right up at the Germans, and then they gave them it blazing hot with the bayonet. The Germans' pluck lasts until we are fifty yards from them, and then they are off. It would do you good to see our little chaps chasing great big fellows shouting and laughing. You wouldn't think it was war."

A British Guardsman related how his regiment received German cavalry: "Suddenly the cavalry remounted their horses, and came crashing down on our chaps. 'Now, Guards!' was all the officer in command said, but his men knew what he meant, and they braced themselves for the tussle. They lined up in the good old British square that has proved a terror to European armies before, and the front ranks waited with the bayonet, while the men inside kept blazing away at the advancing horsemen. They came closer and closer, and the earth seemed to shake and quiver beneath their rush. 'Steady!' was all the commander of the ---- Guards said, and he said it in a dull way, as though he were giving a nice piece of advice to some noisy youngsters who had been making a row. The men answered not a word, but they set their teeth. Then the crash came. Steel met steel, and sparks shot out as sword crossed bayonet. The game of the Germans was to ride down our ranks, but they didn't know that that trick won't work with British troops, and the Guardsmen kept their ground, in spite of the weight of men and horses. The Germans came to a dead stop, and just then they got a volley from the centre of the square. They broke and scattered, and then they got another volley. The order was given to the Guards, and they dashed after them towards the point where our other men were expected."

On another occasion the Brigade of Guards, who were doing a slow retreat for rest, and who were being followed by a brigade of Germans, over double their strength, suddenly stopped, and hiding in a wood waited for the Germans. In a pitched battle, with fixed bayonets, they wiped the whole crowd out--over 4,000 of them. General French had this recorded, and it was read out to all the troops on special parade.

Rifleman Cummings, of the King's Royal Rifles, wrote to his mother: "I shall never forget the first day under fire. It commenced on our left, and in a short time, in spite of heroic efforts, we watched it silence a battery of our guns. The ear-splitting crash of eight shells bursting along our line at once was terrible. However, we held on all day and part of the night. We knew it was part of the scheme, our retiring, and, although hundreds must have been suffering agonies with their feet, the boys always managed a song and a cheer. One night we reached a town and had just settled down in our billets saying to ourselves, 'Now for a well-earned rest,' when we were suddenly ordered to fall in. Our officer told us the Germans had captured a bridge about a mile from the town, and the General had sent word it had to be taken at all costs. It was a dark road and we were all in single file. There was a continued stream of wounded coming up from the bridge. After one or two charges the bridge was taken at the point of the bayonet."

Private Fairweather, of the Black Watch, gives this account of an engagement on the Aisne: "The Guards went up first and then the Camerons, both having to retire. Although we had watched the awful slaughter in these regiments, when it was our turn we went off with a cheer across 1,500 yards of open country. The shelling was terrific and the air was full of the screams of shrapnel. Only a few of us got up to 200 yards of the Germans. Then with a yell we went at them. The air whistled with bullets, and it was then that my shout of '42nd for ever!' finished with a different kind of yell. Crack! I had been presented with a souvenir in my knee. I lay helpless and our fellows retired over me. Shrapnel screamed all round, and melinite shells made the earth shake. I bore a charmed life. A bullet went through the elbow of my jacket, another through my equipment, and a piece of shrapnel found a resting place in a tin of bully beef which was on my back. I was picked up eventually during the night, nearly dead from loss of blood."

There is little of the glory of war for the wounded when they are waiting to be picked up by the stretcher-bearers and wondering whether they will be picked up at all. No wonder that an officer wrote in a letter: "If ever I come back, and anybody at home talks to me about the glory of war, I shall be d----d rude to him."

This is how another Scotch regiment cleared a road for French artillery when German guns were preventing them from passing along it.

The General commanding the British troops demanded for his men the honour of clearing the way. A Scotch regiment was ordered forward. They left the road and advanced in open order across the marshy ground on the left towards the position where the German guns were firing. The German fire was deadly, but nothing could stop the Scotch men. They made a series of short rushes, making ample use of the ditches, which every hundred yards or so cross the peat bog, to take cover. They were soon within charging distance. The order for fix bayonets was given, and with a ripple the whole line dashed forward. Ditches, barbed wire, and a hail of bullets from quickfirers did not stop them. A rush carried them right up to the German guns, and they bayoneted the gunners at their pieces. A few minutes sufficed to damage the breeches of the guns and so render them useless, and then the regiment fell back, its task accomplished. The brief period this brilliant charge of the Scotch regiment had lasted was sufficient for the French guns to gallop along the road to safety, and they soon came into action.