It was during the fighting of 14th September that Captain Mark Haggard, while leading the Welsh Regiment in the 3rd Brigade, met his death. Private Derry of his company thus tells the story:--"The Welsh were ordered to advance. When about twenty yards from the crest of a hill Captain Haggard ran forward to the top, saw the Germans, and shouted, 'Fix bayonets, boys; here they are!' We fixed, and were prepared to follow him anywhere; but we were checked by a storm of Maxim fire. We knew by the sound that we were up against a tremendous force. There was only one game to play now--bluff them into the belief that we were as strong as they were. So we were ordered rapid firing, which gives an enemy the impression that the firing force is strong. We popped away like this for three hours, never moving an inch from our position. Just near the men was lying our brave captain, mortally wounded. He had charged on to the enemy's Maxims, and had been hit as he was laying out the enemy with the butt of an empty rifle, laughing as he did it. As the shells burst over us he would occasionally open his eyes, so full of pain, and call out, but in a very weak voice, 'Stick it, Welsh! stick it, Welsh!' So our brave lads stuck it until our artillery got in action, and put 'paid' to the score. Captain Haggard died that evening, his last words being, 'Stick it, Welsh!' He died as he had lived--an officer and a gentleman."
When his men were forced to retire to a new position, they had to leave him behind; but his soldier-servant, Lance-Corporal Fuller, ran out from the new trenches and, under a heavy fire, carried him into his own lines. For this deed, as you will hear later, the gallant soldier received the Victoria Cross.
Gunner Thomas Joy, of the Royal Field Artillery, thus describes a night attack on the Aisne:--
"'It's a fine night for the Germans' is what we say out there when it's so dark that you can hardly see your finger before you; and it was just on such a night that I got nicked while serving my gun. The enemy had been quiet all day, for a wonder, and we were just taking a well-earned rest after the hot time we had been having. Just about two in the morning, when the faintest traces of light were to be seen creeping across the sky, there was a heavy rattle of rifle fire on the hill where our advanced men were posted, and soon the whole camp was alive with noise and bustle as the men sprang to arms.
