The next move was to advance across where there was a Red Cross hospital. They dropped shells from airships and fired on it until the place was burned down to the ground. Then they got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on Tuesday night. We camped there until 2 o'clock next morning.
Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all got together and cleared the field for action. [The letter mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the Germans were in the proportion of three to one.] We cut them down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps and dropping like hail. The Colonel passed along the line and said, "Stick it, boys."
I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades dropping down--some getting their heads blown off and others their legs and arms. I was fighting with my shirt off. A piece of shell went right through my shirt at the back and never touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between the wheels to stop bullets.
We were there, all busy fighting, when an airship came right over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the shells were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line and saw the German guns coming toward us. We turned our two centre guns on them and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.
Just after that a shell burst right over our gun. That one got me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off; you see, they got completely around us. I went about two miles and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin Hospital. We were shelled out of there about 2 in the morning, and then taken in a train and taken down to a plain near Rouen. Next morning we were put on a ship for dear old England.
_The following letter from a soldier at the front who has taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of Paris, Aug. 16:_
We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action. We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They have been told a thousand phantasmagoria--that France had declared war, that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols, and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they had no desire to share a like fate.