PILGRIMAGE TO MONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19834, 3 January 1928, Page 12

PILGRIMAGE TO MONS.

THE "OLD CONTEMPTIBLES." VISIT ON ARMISTICE DAY. For the first time since the war an organised party of the British soldiers who had fought at Mons thirteen years ago paid a visit on Armistice Day to the old battlefield. The party numbered 200. All of them were wearing the familiar 1914 Stiir; most of them were wearing many other medals and decorations; throe of them were wearing the Victoria Cross. Among these was Private F. S. Godley, Royal Fusiliers, who was the first to earn the Victoria Cross during the. war. He obtained the honour for blowing up a bridge over the railway there. He was then captured by the Germans and was a prisoner throughout the war. tk'lour-Sergeant S. J. Bent and Driver Drain were the others. These three men led the procession through the town. Immediately behind them were two soldiers who had been blinded during tlift war. Private McMullen and Private England. each led by a companion. Behind these again were more than a dozen !amo and limping survivors of the war, and then came the remainder, marching through iho narrow, old streets, singing the old army songs, accompanied by a Belgian military band. i The whole party, - preceded by bands and the military and civic representatives, marched to the town war memorial, where wreaths were laid-, while the British visitors tiled by bareheaded to the playing of the Belgian National Anthem. A procession was again formed and the men marched two miles to the cemetery. The pilgrims drew up behind the Stone of Remembrance, while the Belgian representatives, many of them with banners, stood before them at the foot of the Cross of Sacrifice. The hooters from Mons announced the. start of the Silence. Belgian buglers blew a single blast, and there was complete silence, made more impressive by the fluttering of the Belgian banners in the wind and the waving of the visitors' own standard, which bears the simple inscription, " God. King, Country." It was a Silence that will long be remembered by every one who was privileged to be there, whether ho was Belgian or British.