[Illustration: The Charge of the 9th Lancers at Audregnies.
Away galloped the lancers, shouting with joy at the prospect of coming to hand-grips with the enemy. Alas! all unknown to them the Germans had protected their flank with many lines of barbed wire. When the lancers were about five hundred yards from the enemy's flank they found themselves held up by this terrible entanglement. They tried hard to break through, but in vain, and all the while a death-storm raged about them from rifle and battery. "We simply galloped like rabbits in front of a line of guns," said a lancer who survived, "men and horses falling in all directions." The enemy could not be reached, and nothing could live in that zone of death. The lancers were forced to retire, and as they did so the guns caught them on the flank and made awful havoc amongst them. Only a hundred lancers returned out of eight hundred and fifty. It was the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava all over again--just as gallant, just as thrilling, and just as useless!
The remnants of the regiment, including the squadron of Captain Francis Grenfell, found shelter under the lee of a light railway embankment. Here they found an artillery officer and a dozen gunners of the 119th Royal Field Artillery, whose battery had been put out of action by German shells. They were the sole survivors. Captain Grenfell had already been badly wounded in the hand and the leg, but he was determined to prevent the guns from falling into the hands of the enemy. He rode out amidst the hailstorm of shot and shell to see if there was a way by which they could be withdrawn to the British lines, and having discovered a road, walked his horse back so that his men might not think the risk too great.
As soon as he was back under the shelter of the embankment he called for volunteers. He reminded his lancers that the 9th had saved the guns at Maiwand,[47] and had more than once come to the rescue of artillery in South Africa. Every man responded to his call; all were eager to have a hand in this glorious exploit. Leaving their horses behind them, they rushed out to the stranded guns; and, working with a will, hauled one of them over the dead bodies of the drivers, on and on, until it was safe from capture. Again and again they returned under a merciless fire, until every gun was out of danger. Hardly had the last gun been moved into safety when the German infantry appeared. The guns had been saved in the very nick of time.