Letter 21 From Sergeant Griffiths, of the Welsh Regiment, to His Parents at Swansea
The fighting at Mons was terrible, and it was here that our 4th and 5th Divisions got badly knocked, but fought well. Our artillery played havoc with them. About 10 o’clock on Monday we were suddenly ordered to quit, and quick, too, and no wonder. They were ten to one. Then began that retreat which will go down in history as one of the greatest and most glorious retirements over done. Our boys were cursing because our backs were towards them; but when the British did turn, my word, what a game! The 3rd Coldstreams should be named “3rd Cold Steels,” and no error. Their bayonet charge was a beauty.
Among numerous other such letters that have been published up and down the country is this in which a corporal of the North Lancashire Regiment gives a graphic little picture of his experiences to the Manchester City News:
When we got near Mons the Germans were nearer than we expected. They must have been waiting for us. We had little time to make entrenchments, and had to do the digging lying on our stomachs. Only about 300 of the 1,000 I was with got properly entrenched. The Germans shelled us heavily, and I got a splinter in the leg. It is nearly right now, and I hope soon to go back again. We lost fairly heavily, nearly all from artillery fire. Altogether I was fighting for seventy-two hours before I was hit. The German forces appeared to be never-ending. They were round about us like a swarm of bees, and as fast as one man fell, it seemed, there were dozens to take his place.
There is one in which James Scott, reservist, tells his relatives at Jarrow that British soldiers at Mons dropped like logs. The enemy were shot down as they came up, but it was like knocking over beehives—a hundred came up for every one knocked down. He thought the Germans were the worst set of men he had ever seen. Their cavalry drove women and children in front of them in the streets of Mons so that the British could not fire.
A wounded non-commissioned officer of the Pompadours, whose regiment left Wembley Park a week before the fighting began, says that in the four days’ battle commencing at Mons on the Sunday, August 23rd, and lasting until August 26th, they were continually under fire:
We had to beat off several cavalry attacks as well as infantry, and when the trouble seemed to be over the Germans played on us with shrapnel just like turning on a fire hose. Several of our officers were hit on Wednesday. Heavy German cavalry charged us with drawn sabres, and we only had a minute’s warning “to prepare to receive cavalry.” We left our entrenchments, and rallying in groups, emptied our magazines into them as they drew near. Men and horses fell in confused heaps. It was a terrible sight. Still, on they came. They brought their naked sabres to the engage, and we could distinctly hear their words of command made in that piercing, high tone of voice which the Germans affect.
The enemy had a terrible death roll before their fruitless charge was completed, a thick line of dead and wounded marking the ground over which they had charged. We shot the wounded horses, to put them out of their misery, whilst our ambulances set to work to render aid to the wounded. Our Red Cross men make no distinction. Friend and foe get the same medical treatment, that’s where we score over the Germans.
If they had been Uhlans we should not have spared them, as we owe them a grudge for rounding up some Tommies who were bathing. They took their clothes away, and tied the men to trees. We swore to give them a warm time wherever we met them.
A wounded corporal writes:
It looked as if we were going to be snowed under. The mass of men that came at us was an avalanche, and every one of us must have been simply trodden to death and not killed by bullets or shells when our cavalry charged into them on the left wing, not 500 yards from the trench I was in, and cut them up. Our lads did the rest, but the shells afterwards laid low a lot of them.
The following is an extract from a letter received by a gardener from his son:
You complained last year of the swarms of wasps that destroyed your fruit. Well, dad, they were certainly not larger in number than the Germans who came for us. The Germans are cowards when they get the bayonets at them. A young lieutenant, I don’t know his name, was one of the coolest men I have ever seen, and didn’t he encourage our chaps! I saw him bring down a couple of Germans who were leading half a company.
A fact that stands out continually in these tales of eye-witnesses is the overwhelming numbers in which the Germans were hurled upon them. One says they seemed to be rising up endlessly out of the very ground, and as fast as one mass was shot down another surged into its place; the innumerable horde is compared by various correspondents to “a great big battering-ram,” to a gigantic swarm of wasps, to a swarm of bees, to a flock of countless thousands of sheep trying to rush out of a field; to the unceasing pouring of peas out of a sack. It was the sheer mass and weight of this onrush that forced the small British army back on its systematic, triumphant retreat, and probably the most striking little sketch of this phase of the conflict is that supplied by an Irish soldier invalided to Belfast, which I include in the following selection of hospital stories.
The last few weeks have been like a dream to me, says a wounded private of the Middlesex Regiment. After we landed at Boulogne we were magnificently treated, and everyone was in the highest spirits. Then we set off on our marching. We were all anxious to have a slap at the Germans. My word! If they only knew in our country how the Germans are treating our wounded there would be the devil to pay.
It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Mons, I believe, that we got our first chance. We had been marching for days with hardly any sleep. When we took up our position the Germans were nearer than we thought, because we had only just settled down to get some rest when there came the blinding glare of the searchlight. This went away almost as suddenly as it appeared, and it was followed by a perfect hail of bullets. We lost a good many in the fight, but we were all bitterly disappointed when we got the order to retire. I got a couple of bullets through my leg, but I hope it won’t be long before I get back again. We never got near enough to use our bayonets. I only wish we had done. Talk about civilized warfare! Don’t you believe it. The Germans are perfect fiends.