The call went round for a cigarette, but nobody had one--lots of cigarettes were sent out to the soldiers that never reached them--but poor Layden was soon beyond the need of fags. He was delirious when our stretcher-bearers came and took him to a barn which had been turned into a temporary hospital. He lingered there for some time; but the last I saw of him was on the field. I missed him badly, because we had been good chums, and whatever we got we used to give each other half of it.
For about five hours, until two o’clock in the afternoon, that part of the battle went on, and all the time we were holding the Germans back; then we were reinforced by the remainder of our troops, who came across the pontoon bridge to our assistance.
The Germans now seemed to think that they had had enough of it and they held up white flags, and we left the shelter of the wood and went out to capture them. I should think that there were about three hundred of the Germans at that point who pretended to surrender by holding up the white flag; but as soon as we were up with them their people behind fired at us--a treacherous trick they practised very often. In spite of it all we managed to get the best part of the prisoners safe and drove them in before us to our own lines. When they really surrendered, and did not play the white flag game, we used to go up and take all their rifles, bayonets and ammunition, and throw them away out of their reach, so that they could not make a sudden dash for them and turn on us. When we had chased a few prisoners and had seen what the Germans meant by the white flag signal, we were told to take no notice of it, but to keep on shooting till they put their hands up.
A lot of the prisoners spoke English and said how glad they were to be captured and have no more fighting to do. Some said they loved England too much to want to fight against us, and a German said, “Long live King George, and blow the Kaiser!” But I don’t know how many of them meant what they said--you can’t depend on Germans.
We had plenty of talks with the German prisoners who could speak English. Some of them who had lived in England spoke our language quite well, and it was very interesting to hear what they had to say about us and the French and the Belgians. They couldn’t stand the British cavalry, and one man said, “We don’t like those Englishmen on the grey horses at all,” meaning the Scots Greys. Several of the prisoners said they didn’t mind so much fighting the French, because the French infantry fired too high, nor the Russians, because they fired too low; “but,” they said, “every time the Englishman pulls the trigger he means death.” That was a very nice compliment to us, and there was a great deal of truth in what was said about the British rifle fire. I can assure you that when we settled down to the work we often enough plugged into the Germans just as if we were on manœuvres.