Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (5 page)

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, for we had a long way to go through turnips. The prospect was extremely unattractive. The turnips seemed to offer a sort of cover, and I thought of the feelings of the partridges, a covey of which rose as we sank. Tom gave us a minute in which to get our wind – we lay gasping in the heat, while the shrapnel splashed about . . . As we rose, with a number of partridges, the shooting began again.

The following day, as the position on the left flank of the BEF deteriorated, the cavalry was ordered forward to take part in one of the great charges against both infantry and artillery. The 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards was one of three regiments, including the 9th Lancers and 18th Hussars, ordered to attack across largely open fields to stop the advance of German troops and to give the hard-pressed British infantry time to get away.

2/Lt Roger Chance, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

The regiment waits, dismounted, in a field behind the village. I have slipped the reins over my charger’s head and he crops the lucerne. A remount, drafted from a hunting stable, he has not worked off a summer’s ease and sweat darkens his bay coat. Cleg flies, out for blood, pester him. A lark sings out to me in a pause in the boom of the guns . . . ‘Get girthed up,’ says [Captain] Oldrey, ‘stand by your horses, prepare to mount, mount.’ The commands are rapped from troop to troop and ‘walk-march’ follows. There is a whee-thump of shells and a crash of house tiles from the village ahead. I see Colonel Mullens halted on the bank above, grimly watching us go. The order given to our Major Hunter will become a hasty squadron order yelled to me from those in front but all I can hear is the wholesale crack of shrapnel.

We span the unmetalled road which runs straight, unfenced, through a stubble field dotted with corn stooks. I endeavour one-handed to control my almost runaway steed. Talbot has gone down in a crashing somersault. Then I’m among the ranks of those who, halted by wire, veer right in disorder like a flock of sheep. A trooper crouched on his saddle is blasted to glory by a direct hit whose fragments patter to earth. We follow the 9th Lancers to a heap of slag which affords cover. Sergeant Talbot appears mounted again, with Captain Sewell whose chestnut horse coughs foam and blood at me.

Trp. Benjamin Clouting, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

It was a proper melee, with shell, machine-gun and rifle fire forming a terrific barrage of noise. Each troop was closely packed together and dense volumes of dust were kicked up, choking us and making it impossible to see beyond the man in front. We were galloping into carnage, for nobody knew what we were supposed to be doing and there was utter confusion from the start. All around me, horses and men were brought hurtling to the ground amidst fountains of earth, or plummeting forwards as a machine gunner caught them with a burst of fire.

Ahead, the leading troops were brought up by agricultural barbed wire strung across the line of advance, so that horses were beginning to be pulled up when I heard for the one and only time in the war a bugle sounding ‘troops right wheel’. I pulled my horse round, then with a crash down she went.

I hit the ground at full tilt and with my sword still firmly attached by a lanyard to my hand, was lucky not to impale myself. Dazed, I struggled to my feet and can now recall only an odd assortment of fleeting thoughts and sights – a single image of chaos. A riderless horse came careering in my direction and, collecting myself, I raised my hand in the air and shouted ‘Halt!’ at the top of my voice. It was a 9th Lancers’ horse, a shoeing smith’s mount and wonderfully trained, for despite the pandemonium, it stopped on a sixpence.

Running through the field to my right was a single-track railway, and mounting, I rode off in that direction.

Cpl William Hardy, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

We galloped right across the enemy’s firing line, absolutely galloping to death. The noise of the firing was deafening, being mingled with the death shouts and screams of men. Corporal Murphy, riding by my side, was shot through the chest and I had to take him out of the saddle and undress and tie him down to dress his wound. Men were shaking hands with each other, thankful they were still alive.

Tracking all night. It was sickening to see the wounded horses that were trying to follow us, but the majority were shot.

In this magnificent but desperate charge, the three regiments had been broken up by enemy fire, leaving small groups of surviving cavalrymen to make their own way from the carnage in the hope of finding their units later that day. The charge delayed the Germans, many of whom were terrified by the spectacle, and it was not until several hours later that the enemy pressed forward, during which time many of the British infantrymen had slipped away. One of those who saw the aftermath of the charge was a young private, John Lucy.

Pte John Lucy, 2nd Royal Irish Rgt

These mounted men were only six in number, and they led in other horses beside their own. On approaching them, I was surprised to learn that they had been in action, and were all wounded, slight wounds, bullets through arms and muscles, and that kind of thing. They were hussars. We were full of admiration for these heroes. They told us that some of their regiment had been killed, hence the led horses, and we looked on them and the riderless horses with increased respect. There is something poignant in a riderless horse coming out of battle. For the moment we thought them even greater beings than the cavalrymen. The mildness in their eyes and the grace of their bodies as they pawed the ground warmed us towards them. We patted their sleek necks.

The retreat from Mons would cause the horses as well as the men an immense amount of suffering. For the civilians, the German advance was nothing short of catastrophic. As the British regiments retreated, the soldiers became caught up in a huge civilian exodus, people abandoning everything but what they could carry.

Capt. Arthur Osburn, Medical Officer attd. 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

The refugees were driving their cattle, sheep, pigs, geese and poultry and bringing, in every kind and form of vehicle, all they possessed from their babies in arms to their grandfather clocks. Tired old women with their aprons full of ornaments and silver forks gesticulated and wept and fainted. There were men carrying mattresses and women dragging children. Cart-horses and bullocks, hay-carts, dog-carts, wagonettes and decrepit and reluctant motor cars were all jammed together in the most extraordinary confusion.

2/Lt Arnold Gyde, 2nd South Staffordshire Rgt

How miserable they were, these helpless, hopeless people, trailing sadly along the road, the majority with all they had saved from the wreckage of their homes tied in a sheet, and carried on their backs. Some were leading a cow, others riding a horse, a few were in oxen-driven wagons. They looked as if they had lost faith in everything, even in God. They had the air of people calmly trying to realise the magnitude of the calamity which had befallen them.

Cpl William Watson, RE, 5th Div.

We found the company encamped in a schoolhouse, our fat signal sergeant doing dominie at the desk. I made him a comfortable sleeping-place with straw, then went out on the road to watch the refugees pass. I don’t know what it was. It may have been the bright and clear evening glow, but – you will laugh – the refugees seemed to me absurdly beautiful. A dolorous, patriarchal procession of old men with white beards leading their asthmatic horses that drew huge country carts piled with clothes, furniture, food, and pets. Frightened cows with heavy swinging udders were being piloted by lithe middle-aged women. There was one girl demurely leading goats.

Capt. Arthur Corbett-Smith, RFA

No man in the world is more tender to helpless or dumb creatures than the British soldier or sailor; no man more cheerful. And no man in the Force but felt his heart wrung by the infinite pathos of the folk of Mons and round it. History will never record how many soldiers lost their lives that day in succouring the people who had put such trust in their presence.

And how many won such a distinction as no king can bestow – the love and gratitude of little children? One man, at least, I knew (I never learned his name) who, at the tears of two tiny mites, clambered into the ruins of a burning outhouse, then being shelled, to fetch something they wanted, he could not understand what. He found a terror-stricken cat and brought it out safely. No, not pussy, something else as well. Back he went again, and after a little search discovered on the floor in a corner a wicker cage, in it a blackbird. Yes, that was it. And, oh, the joy of the girl mite at finding it still alive!

‘Well, you see, sir,’ he said afterwards, ‘I’ve got two kiddies the image of them. And it was no trouble, anyway.’

Pte John Lucy, 2nd Royal Irish Rgt

Our own cheerful platoon commander, he who was so keen on bayonet charges, now limps badly, and commandeers a heavy Belgian carthorse – a vile animal, a stink factory that gasses the whole platoon and adds to our misery. Another horse, an officer’s charger, is found by a corporal, who rides it all day and only late in the evening discovers that the saddlebags are stuffed with chocolate. There is a scramble for the chocolate, and the artillery come and claim the charger to take the menial place of a draught horse gone lame in a gun team.

Many artillery horses fall out, lame and fatigued. The men outmarch the horses. Some horses have been shot, others stripped of harness and left alive, standing or limping, along the line of retreat.