A Famous Ride.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 48, 22 June 1917, Page 2

A Famous Ride.

BRITISH CAVALRY CHARGE. An officer of the Deccan Horse gives the following account of the charge of detachments of that regiment and of the Dragoon Guards' on Friday, July 14 At 6.30 we started our famous ride into the enemy l country, every now and then coming under heavy shell fire—shrapnel and high explosive. No oni can believe, without seeing, what, a state the ground is in ; there is not room for a table-cloth on any part of the ground there without some part of it touching a shell hole, so you can imagine the regiment galloping over it at full gallop, barbed wire—well cut by shell fire —old trenches, dead bodies, and every sort of debris lying in every direction. Words fail me to describe it. That was for about three miles,; then full tilt down a steep bank like the haggard field, but steeper, into a very famous valley, where the shrapnel got worse, as we were spotted by one of their sausage balloons. This was soon driven down by the fire of our batteries, which just smothered it with shrapnel. Here we went through our infantry, who cheered us madly as we galloped by, all wishing us luck. On we went, past the remains of guns and everything—tons of ammunition and abandoned material and dead Huns everywhere ; and we passed here an enormous gun they had left behind, so really I suppose it was us that took it. We were under cover here for half a mile, but suddenly, coming out of the valley, we had to turn sharp to the right up another little valley, and here we came under terrific, but rather inaccurate, machine gun fire from two directions. I cannot tell you anything about casualties, but it was here my_ chestnut mare was killed. We went about a mile up this valley, and then got some cover under a bank—by “we” all this time I mean the regiment and our British regiment. Herf we stopped for ten minutes, and then we got orders for our squadron to go on as advance guard in a certain direction. It was now about 7.30 in the evening, and there were twenty-four aeroplanes hovering ’ over us, and one monoplane came down to about 200 feet and fired his machine-guns on the Huns just over us—going round and round—the finest sight I have ever seen. Well, we moved out under a heavy fire, and got on about half a mile. During this advance we rounded up eight prisoners, while between us and the British regiment. I suppose, we stuck sword and lance about forty of them—a glorious sight. Our men were splendid and didn’t want to take any prisoners, but these eight had chucked away their arms, so we couldn’t very well do them in. They were simply terrified, and one clung on to my leg and kept calling “Pity ! Pity !’•’ his eyes starting out of his head. Poor devil, I pitied him, and we sent him back to the regiment.