Our first night after leaving ———— was at a village where there was a delicious running stream, and we bathed to our hearts’ content in a secluded bend away from the public gaze. The people were shy and seemed alarmed, so the officer showed them a letter from our dear old friend the priest, which served as an informal passport during our journey.
The Uhlans had been there and paid for some food, cleared the chairs away from the church and turned it into a stable, and although the people had shown them every civility the Germans threw manure into the holy water stoup, smashed the head of the blessed Virgin statue, and wilfully disfigured the shrine of St. Louis de France in whose honour a small chapel had been erected. There were no houses damaged, and it is a curious fact that in this particular instance the Uhlans had behaved as religious maniacs of a peculiarly disgusting type, breaking the glass of the church windows, tearing the lace altar frontal, breaking every candlestick upon the altar, and using the vestments of the priest for horse-rubbers.
The other account, like the first, communicated to the _Daily Telegraph_, is from Lieutenant F. V. Drake, of the 11th Hussars, and tells of his escape after the fighting at Mons. Speaking of the retiring movement, he says:—
After six days I was left with thirty-six men to hold the Germans back while the others got away; but we were surrounded by a brigade of German cavalry. First of all we tried to get across country, and were caught up in barbed wire, and they turned two machine guns on us. They killed a lot of horses, but not many men. We then fought our way on to the road which leads into the village of Honcourt. The village was held by the Germans, and barricaded. We were being shot at from behind and in front, and there was barbed wire on both sides of the road.
We charged the barricade. My horse was shot about 200 yards before I got to the barricade, and I was stunned a bit. When I got up again I found all the other fellows swarming on the barricade. I “joined in the hunt,” and eight others and I eventually got out of the village on foot into a wood, where I divided the men into twos, and told them the direction in which to go and left them, telling each pair to hide in different parts of the wood.