Scots and London men were mixed up, and mingled in crowds which encircled Loos, and forced their way into the village; but roughly still, and in the mass, they were Scots who assaulted Loos itself, and London men who went south of it to the chalk-pits and the Double Crassier.
It was eight o'clock in the morning when the first crowds reached the village, and for nearly two hours afterward there was street-fighting.
It was the fighting of men in the open, armed with bayonets, rifles, and bombs, against men invisible and in hiding, with machine-guns. Small groups of Scots, like packs of wolves, prowled around the houses, where the lower rooms and cellars were crammed with Germans, trapped and terrified, but still defending themselves. In some of the houses they would not surrender, afraid of certain death, anyhow, and kept the Scots at bay awhile until those kilted men flung themselves in and killed their enemy to the last man. Outside those red-brick houses lay dead and wounded Scots. Inside there were the curses and screams of a bloody vengeance. In other houses the machine-gun garrisons ceased fire and put white rags through the broken windows, and surrendered like sheep. So it was in one house entered by a little kilted signaler, who shot down three men who tried to kill him. Thirty others held their hands up and said, in a chorus of fear, "Kamerad! Kamerad!"
A company of the 8th Gordons were among the first into Loos, led by some of those Highland officers I have mentioned on another page. It was "Honest John" who led one crowd of them, and he claims now, with a laugh, that he gained his Military Cross for saving the lives of two hundred Germans. "I ought to have got the Royal Humane Society's medal," he said. Those Germans--Poles, really, from Silesia--came swarming out of a house with their hands up. But the Gordons had tasted blood. They were hungry for it. They were panting and shouting, with red bayonets, behind their officer.
That young man thought deeply and quickly. If there were "no quarter" it might be ugly for the Gordons later in the day, and the day was young, and Loos was still untaken.
He stood facing his own men, ordered them sternly to keep steady. These men were to be taken prisoners and sent back under escort. He had his revolver handy, and, anyhow, the men knew him. They obeyed, grumbling sullenly.