Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden Read Online Free PDF Page B

us flopped simultaneously to the floor. I arose with an effort and continued in a quavering voice: ‘I was about to add that I harboured a feeling that something startling was bound to happen to break the spell!’ We did not need telling that the violent blow sustained by the tile above us was the result of a direct hit by a well-directed bullet.
     
    That ‘something startling’ was the Battle of Mons, which would rage around the town throughout the rest of the day. Then, fearing that the British soldiers in the town were about to be enveloped by the overwhelmingly larger German force, the vanguard of the BEF was ordered to pull back, taking the first steps of what would become an epic retreat south. To many men on the fringes of the fighting, the day may well have looked like manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, although the general atmosphere of nervousness would have told them otherwise.
    Lt Malcolm Hay, 1st Gordon Highlanders
    The situation in front of the trenches had not yet changed, as far as one could see, since the first shot was fired. An occasional bullet still flicked by, evidently fired at very long range.
    The corner house of the hamlet six to seven hundred yards to our left front was partly hidden from view by a hedge. The cover afforded by this house, the hedge and the ditch which ran alongside it, began to be a cause of anxiety. If the enemy succeeded in obtaining a footing either in the house itself or the ditch behind the hedge, our position would be enfiladed.
    One of my men who had been peering over the trench through two cabbage stalks, proclaimed that he saw something crawling along behind this hedge. A prolonged inspection with the field glasses revealed that the slow-moving, dark-grey body belonged to an old donkey carelessly and lazily grazing along the side of the ditch. The section of A platoon who were in a small trench to our left rear, being farther away and not provided with very good field glasses, suddenly opened rapid fire on the hedge and the donkey disappeared from view. This little incident caused great amusement in my trench, the exploit of No. 4 section in successfully dispatching the donkey was greeted with roars of laughter and cries of ‘Bravo the donkey killers’, all of which helped to relieve the tension.
    It was really the donkey that made the situation normal again. Just before there had been some look of anxiety in men’s faces and much unnecessary crouching in the bottom of the trench. Now the men were smoking, watching the shells, arguing as to the height at which they burst over our heads, and scrambling for shrapnel bullets.
    Capt. Aubrey Herbert, 1st Irish Guards
    The order to move came about 5.30, I suppose. We went down through the fields rather footsore and came to a number of wire fences which kept in cattle. These fences we were ordered to cut. My agricultural instinct revolted at this destruction. We marched on through a dark wood to the foot of some cliffs and, skirting them, came to the open fields, on the flank of the wood, sloping steeply upwards. Here we found our first wounded man, though I believe as we moved through the wood an officer had been reported missing.
    The first stretch was easy. Some rifle bullets hummed and buzzed round and over us, but nothing to matter. We almost began to vote war a dull thing. We took up our position under a natural earthwork. We had been there a couple of minutes when a really terrific fire opened.
    The men behaved very well. A good many of them were praying and crossing themselves. A man next to me said: ‘It’s hellfire we’re going into.’ It seemed inevitable that any man who went over the bank must be cut neatly in two. Then, in a lull, Tom gave the word and we scrambled over and dashed on to the next bank. Bullets were singing round us like a swarm of bees, but we had only a short way to go, and got, all of us, I think, safely to the next shelter, where we lay and gasped and thought hard.
    Our next rush was worse,