Hour after hour, all through the time of darkness, and until daylight came, that terrible fight went on. For seven long hours a few hundred British Guards had kept at bay an enormous body of Germans--and at the end of the firing we had killed far more than the whole of our force numbered when the battle began. We had given them wholesale death from our machine-guns, our rifles, and our artillery, and they had faced it--they had been driven on to it. Now they were to have the bayonet.
We gave them two charges; but they didn’t stop long, for as soon as they saw the cold steel on the ends of our rifles they were off like a shot, throwing down a lot of rifles and equipment. When this happened it was between five and six o’clock on the morning of the 27th, and we then got the order to retire.
We were told that we had lost 126 in killed and wounded. That was a heavy list, but not so big as we had expected, bearing in mind the furious nature of the fight. The marvel was that we had not been wiped out, and we should certainly have been in a very serious state if it had not been for the 17th Field Battery. There is this to be said, too: if the Germans had broken through our lines it would have meant that, in all probability, the whole Second Division of our army would have been cut up.
We fell in and were soon on the march again, retiring, and we marched as fast as we could go till we halted at a rather large town about ten miles from Landrecies. Here we were in clover, in a way of speaking, because we sheltered in a clay-pit where the French had been making bricks, and we all sat down and waited for our tea of German shells.
They soon came and we were on the move again, and we were constantly at it, retiring and fighting, until we halted about thirty miles from Paris; then we were told that after retiring another dozen miles it would be our turn to advance.
Didn’t we cheer? It was glorious to hear we were going to chase the Germans instead of their chasing us. At this time we had our first wash for a fortnight, and it was as good as having a thousand pounds given to us.
The fiercest fighting of the war has taken place on Sundays, and it was on a Sunday that the Battle of the Marne began. The Germans had had the biggest surprise of their lives on a Sunday, and that was at Mons. Though we had been kept on the go because they outnumbered us so hopelessly, we mauled them mercilessly on the retreat, teaching them many bitter lessons. When we got to the Marne and were able to tackle them on equal terms, they scarcely had a look in. The Germans had almost reached the forts of Paris, and, I daresay, had their bands ready to play them into the city. Soon, however, they were hurrying back on their tracks a good deal faster than they had come. We heard the German bands playing a good many times, but every time we heard the music it was farther away from Paris.