Letter 71 From Sapper H. Mugridge, R.E. (Second Letter, Published in the “Sussex Daily News”)
We were laying our gun cotton—ten of us were the last to leave, and the Germans stopped us. We had to run for it down the main street of the town of Landrecies, and, being dark, we could not see where we were going. We got caught in some telegraph wires which had been put across the street. We had to cut them away with our bayonets. On Monday morning, when things were quieter, we went nearly into the German lines. We could hear them giving orders. Our job was to put barbed wire across the road. I was thankful to get out of it. We could see the Germans burning their dead. They must have lost a few thousand men, as our troops simply mowed them down.
I saw one sergeant kill fourteen Germans, one after the other. They came up in fifties, all in a cluster, and you couldn’t help hitting them. They were only 400 yards from us all day on Sunday. They are very cruel. Our people used a church for a hospital, and it was filled with our wounded, but the place was shelled and knocked down. They stabbed a good many of our men while lying on the battlefield. They have no respect for the Red Cross. To see women and children driven from home and walking the roads is terrible—old men and women just the same. At the town where we were we got cut off from our people—eighteen of us—and the houses were being toppled over by the German artillery. The people clung around us, asking us to stay with them, but it was no good. When we left, the town was in flames. But our men did fight well. You never saw anything so cool in your life. Anyone would have thought it was a football match, for they were joking and laughing with one another.