GUARDSMAN'S STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

GUARDSMAN'S STORY.

RETREAT FROM MONS.

CARRYING THE WOUNDED. [from our own correspondent.] London, February 16. It is practically impossible now-a-days to travel in England without having one compartment invaded by soldiery or suddenly discovering that some quiet civilian in the corner is himself a soldier, returned full of wounds and experience from the front. The one I am thinking of now might easily have passed for a tall and exceptionally well set-up agricultural labourer. He was dressed in respectable mufti, a phenomenon which one often encounters in these days. The British soldier is not supposed to be out of uniform, but the wounded as often as not reach England without a stich of their own ■ clothing, which has generally to be burned at the field hospital; and once a man is wounded the War Office is not able, in tho urgent scarcity of khaki, to give him a new outfit until he rejoins his battalion at tho depot. My friend came away from France with a pair of boots and a chemise, and he was going down to London, to Birdcage Walk to be more precise, to rejoin the 2nd battalion Scots Guards, after three or four months invalidity. This was a case of a man who went through Mons—it is generally expressed " all through Mons," and the great retreat to tho Marne, and the advance to tho Aisne and the battle, there. It was on tho "Ainge'' —as the soldiers call it— that ho was wounded, and be blames his own foolishness that there were eight bullets in him instead of only two. He stood still in tho open looking "at a German infantryman fixing his machine gun in position, and received a cluster of early bullets in the shoulder. Already his shin bono had been smashed by rifle bulled, so he limped off to cover and was taken to hospital. To-day, like many another, he is sound and straight and well, though three of the bullets remain in his body. A Tradition of Bravery. In case it is never put into writing Scotsmen everywhere ought to be apprised of tho foundation of the tradition of braverv which must surround the name of Colonel Grant-Duff, of the Black Watch. Whenever I have met Scots soldiers since i tho war began I have heard of the gallantry of Grant-Duff, of which all of them seem" to have heard. It was at one of tho early battles, perhaps at Mons; at any rate the sorely pressed British required all the encouragement they could get. and the man who stands out in so many Sects narratives for bravery and complete disregard of himself is Colonel Grant-Duff. A Cameronian once told me that Grant-Duff was the bravest man he Lad ever met. "Aye, that was he," chimed in a man . of the Black Watch itself. He jist threw his life away. There was no need for him to be killed; but he never thocht of himself!" Strange to say the Scots Guardman also spoke of the Black Watch colonel. Someone was asking him if he knew Major Fraser, the brother of Lord Lovat, from Inverness. "Know him, of course I do; but he's killed now." (A pause.) " Aye, and gey sloppy he was killed to," added the Guardsman. I wondered what this might mean, but had not long to wait. "He was stannin' just beside me. There was a hay stack near, and he gave me a shove and said, ' Get down out of that, man; you'll be shot.' I got down quickly and lively, and that minute a bullet got him right through the heart. And him telling me to get down." Somebody said a lot of the nobility were being* lost. "Aye," said the Guardsman. "There's plenty of them killed. That's one tV : -- they know right; they know how to die. Man, there was GrantDuff. Did ever ye hear of him.. We were in the trenches and getting it pretty hot, and Grant-Duff was walking up and down on top. He had a whole bundle of bandoliers on his arm, and he was fhrowinsc " them first to one, then to another, and calling out, 'Here ye are, boys, slap it into them.' There was no need for him to be killed. My, he was brave." The Message From Mons. This Guardsman was a signaller, and had done his three years in Egypt with his bittalion not long before the war broke out. His view of Cairo is that it is the finest place in the world for the soldier. Tho climate is all that it should be, and the sole drawback is the vermin. In Cairo, he said, the soldiers used to put their mattresses out in the square once a week to allow the ants to clear them of vermin. It was a hint they had picked up in the Boer war. As a signaller the Guardsman was not under quite the same control that on ordinal-}* private endures, and he was some- ' thing of an autocrat in his own sphere. For example, the signallars have the power of refusing to accept messages which they judge to be not sufficiently authentic. My friend claims to have sent back the message from his bridadier at Mons announcing the retirement, and he keeps in his possession the pencil copy. Even so early the snipers in the German battalions were earning a nasty reputation amongst the British. One of them in particular the Guardsman had a grudge against. "He was no man," he exclaimed • with warmth. "He was a dirty swine. I was lying there in the sun all day. My water bottle was just a foot or two away, but whenever I moved or rolled over to get a drink, bang would go his shots all round my head and shoulders. He was no man at all." Like many another this Guardsman took his turn at carrying wounded com- ■ rades in the retreat. Once he had a Cameron on his back and carried him stolidly for a considerable distance. "How are you sticking it. Jock. I says. But he didn't answer. Well, I says, I reckon it's up to me to have a rest; so I put him • down. He never moved or said anything, and then I saw that he was dead. His face was blown clean away." Talking about short commons, the Guardsman says he once stole an apnle In France and got eight days for it. He was desperately hungry and could not resist it. The officer said they were specially anxious not to steal anything from the French: hence the nunishment, In th whole of his days in France, from Mons to the .Aisne. the Guardsman admits bavins stolen three chickens, a rab- . bit, and the apple.