The aeroplane was absolutely undamaged, and was appropriated by the British aviators.
(3) _From a “Daily Telegraph” correspondent at Rouen_:
It was known that there were British wounded in Rouen--I had even spoken to one of them in the streets--but how was one to see them? The police commissaire sent me to his central colleague, who sent me on to the état major, who was anxious to send me back to him, but finally suggested that I should see the military commissary at one of the stations. He was courteous, but very firm--the authorisation I asked for could not be, and was not, granted to anyone. At the headquarters of the British General Staff the same answer in even less ambiguous terms.
It was then that Privates X., Y., Z. came to my aid. Private Z. had a request to make of me. It was that I should see to it that the black retriever of his regiment now at the front should be photographed, and that the photograph should appear in _The Daily Telegraph_. Private Z. had a temperature of 102·5, and looked it, but he was not worrying about that. He was worrying about the photograph of the regimental retriever, which I understood him to say, though dates make it almost incredible, had gone through the Boer campaign, and had not yet had his photograph in the papers. So I met by appointment Privates X., Y., and Z. outside the Hospice Général of Rouen, and by them was franked in to the hospital, where a few dozen of our wounded were sunning themselves. It was just time, and no more, as orders had been received a few minutes before that the British wounded were to be transferred from Rouen to London, for something grave was afoot.
“Do you want to get back to England?” someone called out to a soldier whose arm was in a sling, and the whole sleeve of whose jacket had been ripped by the fragment of a shell.
“Not I,” he shouted; “I want to go to the front again and get my sleeve back, and something more.”
I managed to speak with two or three of the wounded as they were getting ready for the start. One of them, an artilleryman, had been injured by his horses falling on him at Ligny, I guessed it was--only guessed, for Tommy charges a French word as bravely and much less successfully than he charges the enemy. It was the same story that one hears from all, of a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds. “They were ten to one against us, in my opinion,” he said. “They were all over us. Their artillery found the range by means of aeroplanes. The shell fire was terrible.”
