WITH THE ALLIES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 44, 22 February 1915, Page 2

WITH THE ALLIES

STORIES FROM THE FRONT EARL OF KINGSTON WOUNDED. (MIOH OUR OWN CORRESPONDS.) LONDON, 24th December. Lieutenant the Earl of Kingston, Ist Irish Guards, writes from Boulogne saying how he was wounded : — "We had a bad day on Ist November. They attacked the already overtaxed and unfortunate Seventh Division, and we had to come to their help on Ihe night of the 30th. We dug trenches all night. Then about 7.30 the most damnable shell-fire started, salvos of their big high-explosives intermittently with what they call 'universal.' The latter vvr have not got at present. It has three distinct bursts — one forward, second segmental, and straight down, third segmental backwards. This lasted till 1.30. I called the roll in the trench, passing down names who were hit, and I found I had only one killed and two wounded in spite of this frightful fusillade. Of course, if we had not had a good trench we were all in. As it was we were badly shaken. "I walked down to the next trench, where Captain Mulholland was, and reported all well, etc., and that I expected an attack. He had nob had quite as bad a shelling, but load lost two more men than I. About 2 p.m. suddenly they started shelling again. Our guns answered their fire, but there was no sign of an attack. The howitzers, however, had our range exactly. Suddenly I saw the Gordons retiring, followed by thousands of Germans. We could do nothing. If we shot there was as much chance of killing our men as the enemy, as they seemed all mixed up— Gordons, Oxfords, and Germans. "They were enfilading our trench, so as to draw back on our left fifty yards, and I made our men start throwing up a lie-down trench as best they could, but the enemy turned a Maxim on us, and. I went down before it was completed. »I, had a rotten time. They shot at me on the ground and shells burst all round. I had had my hat shot away before I fell. Then my sergeant and a drummer carried me away. I hear since both poor chaps have been killed. It seems wonderful to be alive. Even wvhen our medical officer was dressing me two shells came through the roof, and he dropped my injured leg." HOW THE HON. H. L. BRUCE DIED. A day or two before the great charge at Ypres, where Captain the Hon. H. L. Bruce, of the Royal Scots, fell, he wrote to his father. Lord Aberdare, saying "It is the finest life I have ever lived." The gallant officer married eight years ago Miss Camilie Clifford, of "Gibson Girl" fame. An officer of the Royal Scots tells a graphic story of the assault. He says : — "The Royal Scots were at that time in the neighbourhood of Ypres, where, indeed, they had been for five weeks previously, holding back the enemy with that tenacity that marked tho work of all the Biitish forces along that line. All through that long period, Captain Bruce and his men had been under almost continuous fire, took part in many brilliant bayonet charges, and in trenches in which the mud was feet deep, and endured the discomforts and hardships with a cheerfulness that was little short of amazing. ! "We received the order for the offensive on 7th- December, and we now know that the movement was very successful. The Scots had a difficult position to attack, and the conditions were unusually unhappy, the ground between the trenche9*being a muddy swamp. Our men, however, entered the charge with good spirits, and, to the credit of Captain Bruce, he led the men with that ! gallantry which was characteristic of all his earlier fighting. "Captain Bruce received a bullet wound in the forehead when the Scots had advanced to within thirty yards of the trenches from which the enemy had to be driven. His death was instantaneous. But the charge was continued with all the vigour we -could command, and we had not long to wait before the Germans went helter-skelter out of the trenches, and we of the Royal Scots became the possessors of them. Then we came back to help those who had been wounded — and there were many of them — and then to bury the dead, among whom, the last, was Captain Bruce. "We laid him to rest near the place where he gave up his life, and the sorrow of the men was inexpressible, for they Ibved Captain Bruce, who had been such a brave, intrepid and devoted leader Altogether, the Royal Scots lost eight officers in that assault, and nowhere along the British lines was the general offensive movement of last Monday week so successful and so decisive as the assault made by the Royal Scots." H.L.I.'S USE THEIR FISTS. "The Germans are very crafty," writes Private Hodgetts, of the 2nd Worcesters. "One night about ten days ago, Tabout 8 o'clock, the sentry on look out saw a man advancing towards our trenches. It was too dark to see what he was dressed in or anything eke, so the sentry challenged him, and he shouted in reply: 'Don't fire, I am Private Lewis, of tho Worcesters.' Of course, the sentry had suspicions, as he knew very well that no Private Lewis had gone out in front, so he aroused a couple of men near him, and they all fired. The man fell, and a couple went out to fetch him in. He was found to be a German, wearing one of our officer's uniforms, and he also had on him field glasses belonging to Captain Depys, who was killed some time ago. "In the last trenches we were in the Highland Light Infantry were on our left, and in some parts of their front the German trenches were only about five or ten yards away. One night they attacked tho H.L.I, s, and they got to such close quartersythat the men could not use their bayonets even. So they had a fierce hand-to-hand fight. Men cut their hands to pieces catching hold of bayonets and smashing the German's rifles, and they kicked and hit with anything they could catch hold of. The H.L.L's came out of it very well. They had about twelve men killed and wounded, but the Germans caught it, severely. I cannot say the number killed and wounded, but the H.L.l. 's captured 65 of them. , A FIGHT IN THE AIR. An officer of the Garrison Artillery writes : — I "I saw a fine piece of work by one of our aviators yesterday. A fairly fast German biplane of a new pattern came over our lines. A strong wind was blowing from the enemy's lines to our lines. The German plane therefore • appeared very rapidly. One of our Bristol planes rose and began to catch up in order to get above the efiemy, and this manoeuvre was fraught with considerable danger to our airman, as the German did his best to prevent it by rifle and revolver fire from his machine. At last, however, our biplane got on the same level as the German. The German then attempted to make for his lines, but, thanks to the adverse wind and the skill of our fellows, ho was absolutely prevented from making any headway. It was really a very thrilling sight watching these two biplanes. The German would dodge from side to side, then plane down and make off in another direction, whilst ouiLfilane

would combat every move of^the enemy in a most splendid fashion. It reminded one of a hawk round a crow. At last the German gave it up and planed down, and landed behind our lines. He was n6t wounded at all, but utterly beaten, and, as I heard one man express it, 'he came down with cold feet.' " HELL'S PLAY. The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) had some fierce fighting with the enemy. Private Heaton writes to his parents at Margate : — " It has been like hell's play, especially while we were defending the position. _ I don't know how I survived it. The 'regiment was badly cut up, but still here we are again, ' merry and bright.' Our platoon was charged several times by the Germans, but .we sent them back, with our compliments, again and again. I split my bayonet in two trying to get it out in time to catch another one. Our regiment has broken all records by holding and being in the trenches for over a month at a stretch — thirty-six days altogether. I daresay we will get relieved soon. It is jolly cpld in the fighting line at the present time — snow on the ground and all the water frozen. The socks freeze on our feet for want of a change. Any amount of the Germans surrendered, and among them were a good many boys of the age of sixteen years, who had never handled a rifle before, but had been driven to it jat the point of a revolver. The other i day, when our trenches had been bombarded for four hours, forty-two shells out of one hundred and eighteen failed to explode. So you see, something is wrong with the Teuton war machine." A.S.C. MEN ESCAPE. A party of A.S.C. men were captuTed by the Germans, and their escape is related by Private Taylor :—: — "The alarm was given, and we were huddled together in a corner, and they j began to tie our hands together. Before ! they had finished there were rifle shots, and officers and men rushed out. The lights were extinguished, and Smiler and the corporal soon released us. I managed to pick up a pair of boots about three sizes too large for me, and made a dash for liberty. Two sentries were o-\ crpowered, and the lot of us got away in the darknees. We had not the slightest idea where wo were going, but we etuck together. Fortunately we were making for our trenches. Tho Germans fired on us, and poor old Smiler got winged, but he kept up with us. Then we lay down to get our breath, and as we could hear our chaps in' the trenches we started to shout as loud *s we could tjiat we were British. We were really afraid our fellows would mistake us for German spies — who are up to all the tricks on the board — and fire on us. We got through all right. During the night there was a lot of firing, aoid when daylight broke we ascertaired that three or four of the Germans who had had U3 as prisoners had been made prisoners -in their turn by eomo of tho Lincolns. ' ' WILLING PRISONERS. A regimental interpreter attached to the Ist Northants Regiment writes :—: — "I had myself the opportunity of making fourteen ppisoners, which, I must confess, was a very easy matter. One evening one of our- men on. the firing ridge was in doubt whether the Germane occupying a trench about 200 yards in front of him were willing to .surrender or not. "As I speak German, I walked up to the line and shouted to the Germans to come in our lines, and that there would be no harm done to them ; the only thing we wanted was for them, to throw their rifles down and keep their x hands up. They fortunately did not shoot, and were very obedient, and came gently along. They told me that they had been sent during the previous night, twenty of them, without officers, to occupy the trench, as the officers did not care to keep their men company when tho fighting was too hot; that in the trench next to theirs all the soldiers had been killed during the day, and they expected the same very soon, so they were glad to be prisoners and on safe "ground. They added that we would have many more prisoners if we did not keep firing at everybody. Thi& little example shows also how the German troops feel after a- few days' soaking in ths trenches (for the weather wa* awful) and what they were inclined to do when their officers were not behind, revolver in hand, to push them on." A ZONE OF DEATH. An. officer on the staff of one of the Belgian divisions in Flanders writes : — " Here we are once more in the firing line, occupying a stretch of the' Yser. Our men are day and. night In the trenches dug along the river embankment ; opposite, some fifty or a hundred yards away, is the enemy. One peepe out, and so doing exposes oneself more or 'lees. Shots ring out, but the result is nothing to talk of. Yesterday, for example, three men hors de combat. The other night the men pushed a raft into the Yser. Rifles and their machine guns came into action. It was much ado about nothing. There are houses on the other bank at the water's edge. We hear the baildits hammering and working away at all sorts of engines. . . "All the region parallel -with the Yser over a width of three or four miles is really a zone of death. Tho houses are three-parts in ruins. Nothing lives now in this region; no trees even, or rather only a few completely stripped of tjieir branches ; an immense plain gridironed with ditches full of water; here and there the greenish-yellow stains of the floods; some corpses of horses; enormous funnel-shaped holes in the black soil ; vestiges of human activity, such as trenches, shelters, plank-bridges, and everywhere numerous empty meat tims. .. \ . And overhead little cotton-wool clouds from bursting shrapnel. You see no living thing, and yet you feel that you. are being watched. Three men standing together will draw the shrapnel fire, which is only too precise in the region where every yard has been marked out." TRENCHES BLOWN UP "Another experience which befell us was when the enemy got down a bit of a golly to within twenty yards of our trenches," writes a private in the Norfolks, " and all day long they amused themselves by throwing bombs into our trenches But of all the bombs they threw not one of them did any harm to our fellows. Alter they had had their turn ours came, for at night we dug some more trenches further back and then retired, to them, and at daybreak we could see the enemy creeping into our trenches which we had vacated. They little thought that they were creeping into their last place, because before we had retired we laid some mines for them. After they had. all got into our trenches | the engineers pulled the string and the figure moved. The mines went off and blew the enemy to bits, while w© lay watching for the pieces, which were nob i very long forthcoming. One of the men was blown into our trenches."