I have served eight years in the Seaforth Highlanders. To begin with I was a bandsman, but when the war broke out and I was recalled to the colours, I became an ordinary private, and the only music that the Germans heard me play was the rattle of my rifle. When we landed in France and marched off to the front the girls seemed to have a special fancy for the kilted men—at any rate they crowded up and hugged and kissed those they could get hold of; so we went off in very good spirits, singing and whistling popular tunes, not forgetting the Marseillaise and “Tipperary.”

Being a strange country we saw a good many things that were new and very strange to us till we got used to them. One amusing incident happened as soon as we were in Belgium, and that was the sight of a big fat man being pulled in a little cart by two dogs. It was funny, but still it made us angry, for we rather looked upon it as cruelty to animals; so we shouted, “Lazy brute!” “Get out and give the dogs a ride!” and so on, and I daresay the man was greatly surprised, though he didn’t know what we were saying. In a little while we understood that dogs are extensively used for haulage purposes in Belgium and we ceased to take any special notice of them.

It was not long after landing before we were told to be ready for the Germans, but that proved a false alarm. We were, however, to get our baptism of fire in a dramatic fashion, and that baptism naturally dwells in my mind more vividly than many of the far bigger things which happened later in the war.

A terrific thunderstorm broke, and a party of us were ordered to billet in a barn. We climbed up into a loft and began to make ourselves comfortable and to make some tea. We had scarcely got the welcome tea to our lips when the hurried order came to clear out of the building, and into the thunderstorm we dashed. Then the German shells began to fly and burst, and in a few minutes the barn was struck and shattered, so that we had a very narrow escape.

It was at this stage that we had our first man killed. He was a chum of mine, a bandsman, named Dougal McKinnon. While we were having our tea Dougal was under cover in the trenches, in front of the barn, with his company. They were under shell fire, and he was killed by bursting shrapnel. He was buried close to the spot where he fell, and being the first of our men to be killed in action we felt it very deeply. Many times after that, when our chums were killed, we had to leave them, because we had no time to bury them.

We got on the move, and when night came it was awful to see the whole countryside lit up with the flames of burning buildings—farms and houses and other places which had been set on fire by the Germans. There was a farm which was blazing furiously and I shall never forget it, for the good reason that in marching we managed to circle it three times before we could get properly on the march and go ahead.

We pushed on to Cambrai, where the cannonading was truly terrible. My company was in support of another company in advance. We lay behind a bank, sheltering, for a few hours. At the back of us was a British howitzer battery, in a bit of a wood, so that we were between two awful fires. It was indescribable—the deafening din, which never ceased or lessened while the duel raged, the excitement, the danger, and the nerve-strain; yet there was something fascinating in watching the firing and wondering what was going to happen.

It is wonderful to think of the working of the human mind at such a time, and strange to recall the odd things one does. In our own case, as we had to go on sheltering and watching, we amused ourselves by counting the number of shells that dropped within a certain area which was well under our observation. The area was, roughly speaking, about 200 yards square, and in three-quarters of an hour no fewer than seventy-six shells exploded over that particular spot. They were shrapnel and high explosive and never struck the ground—they burst in the air, and at one time I counted six shells bursting in the air together. That gives you some idea of the tremendous nature of the German shell fire. Luckily a great number of the shells did not explode at all, or few if any of us could have got away.

It is impossible to praise too highly the British artillery’s work. To my own personal knowledge there was one battery that day—I don’t know which it was—which was under fire for at least seven hours continuously without shifting; and during the whole of that time they were replying to the German guns.

After that shattering experience we camped in a cornfield at night, and were settling down to sleep when were we ordered to move again. For hours, worn and weary though we were, we were on the march, and thankful we were when we halted in a village and got a box of biscuits from the French as a midday snack. We had been forced to part with most of our equipment and many of the greatcoats were thrown away; but I felt that I should want mine and I stuck to it—and I am wearing it now. It has had plenty of rough usage—and here are the holes made by a piece of flying shrapnel.

I am proud to say that the general in command of our division congratulated the regiment on its splendid marching, and I think we did a fine thing, for in about twelve hours we covered about thirty-two miles—actual marching, with just a halt here and there. The Germans had done their best to trap us, but they had not succeeded, and we escaped, to turn the tables on them with a vengeance.

That night I had to report sick—there was something wrong with my ankles. I was unable to march, so I got a lift on a limber-waggon of the 88th Battery of the Royal Field Artillery. During the ride, which lasted all night, I went through some of the finest country I ever saw. It was particularly beautiful because of the time of the year, late autumn, and the clear light of the full moon. This moonlight ride on a limber will be always associated in my memory with the grandest spectacle of its sort I saw during the war.

The battery was travelling along a switchback road, and I was wrapped up in the beautiful and peaceful scenery—it was hard to believe that this calm landscape was the scene of war and that the splendid British gunners I was with had been dealing death and destruction amongst the Germans so lately.

Not far away was a river, winding like a silver thread over the face of the country, and suddenly, from the river, there rose an immense mass of flame and smoke, followed quickly by a thunderous rumbling roar.

I knew at once that a bridge had been blown up. I cannot tell you who destroyed it—Germans or French; all I know is that I saw the sight and it was the most remarkable of its kind that I witnessed—and I saw four splendid bridges destroyed in this manner.

At one time we had crossed a fine bridge and as soon as we had done so a hole was dug and a mine was laid in the centre. Then our cyclist section was sent out to report what was going to happen and the bridge was blown up. In this case we were the last to cross before the explosion occurred.

At an early stage of the operations I was lucky enough to see a very fine fight in the air, a duel between a French airman and a German airman. I was able to follow the duel for miles. The men in the aeroplanes were firing revolvers at each other and we could hear the crack of the shots, though we could not see any definite results, because the duel got too far away. This was the first fight in the air that I saw, and I watched it with extraordinary interest, especially as we all keenly hoped that the German would be brought down, because he had been flying over our lines and quickly directed shell fire on us owing to his signals. For fully twenty minutes I watched this air fight. It was wonderful to see the swiftness with which the machines dived and dodged. The Frenchman circled over the German in the most skilful and daring manner and time after time threatened his existence.

Another remarkable incident I witnessed at this time was the escape of a German cavalryman. He was an Uhlan, a scout, I take it, and quite alone. We were on the march and had been told that the German cavalry were in large numbers near us, and so that we should be ready for them we took up a position, with some Irish infantry to the left of us.

We were lying in position on a hill, and in front of us was three or four miles of good flat country, so that we should have had a fine view of cavalry in force. We watched and waited, but the threatened cavalry did not come—all we saw was this solitary Uhlan, a mere speck on the wide plain.

As soon as the Uhlan was seen the rifles rattled and it was expected that he would be potted; but he seemed to bear a charmed life. The Irish battalion gave him a particularly heavy fire—the Seaforths were too far off to reach him with the rifle; but the Uhlan galloped gaily on, and it was quite amusing to watch him. No doubt he thoroughly enjoyed himself—at any rate he galloped unscathed across two or three miles of open country, and got away.

It was not until we were within about eighteen miles of Paris that the retirement ended and we began the offensive. We had had a very hard time, and were to have a few days’ rest, but we never got it. Yet in spite of the hardships we had some very pleasant times, because of the beauty of the country and the season.

Joyful indeed was the day when we began to drive the Germans back, and it was the more joyful because the advance was almost as swift as our retirement had been.

On that wonderful advance we saw some horrible things—I will not dwell on German barbarities, though there were many proofs of them—including great numbers of horses which had been killed or wounded and left just where they had fallen. No attempt had been made to dispose of the decaying carcases and many a poor brute had died a lingering death.

I was greatly struck by the Germans’ cruelty to their horses, in leaving them like this; but that was one proof of the hurriedness of the enemy’s retreat—the Germans who had got so near Paris and were then flung right away back from the city. I need hardly say that whenever a sign of movement was noticed in a horse a man was sent to put the poor thing out of its misery.

There was still plenty of hardship to put up with, but that did not matter so much when we were driving back the Germans.

I remember very well one day and night of uncommon wretchedness. It was raining heavily and continuously, and in the deluge I and three more men were sent on outpost—to observe and keep our eyes open, and so that we could do that to the best advantage we took up a position on the top of a hayrick. A perfect hurricane was blowing, and the almost solid rain was fairly driven into us; but we stuck it through, and hung on to the top of the haystack till it was dark, then we thankfully got down and went into an open shed for shelter—a building that was just a protection for wheat-stacks.

I had had my turn of picketing and was lying down to get a snatch of sleep when I was ordered to go up a road about a mile and a half away, to find out whether our relief had come. So out into the darkness and the wind and rain I staggered and fought my way through what was the worst night for weather that I ever saw. On and on I and my comrades went, looking hard for our relief, but we never saw it, and we waited there till next morning, when we rejoined our brigade.

Those were times when there was little rest for the Seaforths, or anybody else.

The aeroplanes gave us little chance of rest, and at times they had an uncanny knack of finding us.

One day, after a long, hard march, we put into a wood for shelter. A French supply column was already in the wood and doubtless the Germans knew of or suspected this; at any rate a German aeroplane came over us, with the result that in a few minutes we were shelled out. We rested in another part of the wood till it was dark, then we were taken on to billets, but we had to make another move, because we were shelled out again. That was the sort of thing which came along as part of the day’s work; and as part of the day’s work we took it cheerfully.

When we got the Germans on the move we took prisoners from time to time. I was on guard over a few prisoners, part of a crowd, when one of them came up to me and to my amazement I recognised him as a German who had worked in Soho Square and used often to go to the same place as myself for dinner—a little shop in Hanway Street, at the Oxford Street end of Tottenham Court Road. The prisoner recognised me at once and I recognised him. To show how ignorant the Germans were of the enemy they were fighting, I may tell you that this man said to me, “If we had known we were fighting the English, I would never have left London!”

Was it not strange that the two of us, who had so often met as friends for dinner in the little foreign shop, should meet again as enemies on the banks of the Marne?

I am now coming to a sorrowful personal incident—the loss of my chum, Lance-Corporal Lamont. We had been together from the beginning of the war and had shared everything there was, even to the waterproof sheet. He would carry the sheet one day and I would carry it the next, and whenever such a thing had to be done as fetching drinking-water, often a very dangerous task, we would share that too.

Throughout one awful night of ceaseless rain, which soaked us to the skin, the two of us were in the trenches—we had dug ourselves in, with just ordinary head cover. We lay there till next morning, when an officer came along my platoon and asked if we had any drinking-water.

We told him that we had not.

The officer said, “If you care to risk it, one of you can go and fetch some water.”

We decided to take the risk, which was great, because to get the water meant getting to a farmhouse just behind us, under a heavy fire.

My chum volunteered to go, and, taking the water-bottles, he left the trench and started to cross the open ground between us and the farmhouse. While he was doing this the order came for us to advance—and I never saw him again.

It was soon my turn to be put out of action. A pretty stiff fight was going on and the fire was so heavy that it was very dangerous to be in the open; but it was necessary for me and a few more men to cross a bit of open ground, and we made a start. We had not gone far when a shell came between me and another man who was at my side. The shell struck him fair on the arm and shattered it. He fell over on his side, and as he did so he said, “For Heaven’s sake cut my equipment off!”

I took out my jack-knife and slit the equipment across the shoulders and let it drop away from him.

He crawled off and I was told afterwards that while he was trying to creep to shelter he was struck again and killed.

I crawled as best I could up to the firing line, but when I got there I found that there was no room in the trenches for me, so I had to lie in the open. I had not been there long before a fellow next to me asked me what time it was. I took out my watch and told him it was about eleven-fifteen—and the next thing I knew was that I felt as if someone had kicked me on the top of the head.

I turned round and said, “Tommy, I’m hit!” I became unconscious for some time, then, when I recovered, I said, “Tommy, is it safe to crawl away?”

“No,” said Tommy, “it’s risky. It’s a bit too hot!”

“Never mind,” I answered. “If I stay here much longer I shall collapse. I’m going to have a shot at it—here goes!”

I began to crawl away, but I must have taken the wrong direction, for I was soon under two fires. I was approaching the mouths of two or three of our own guns, which were in front of a farmhouse.

I soon found that this was a bit too warm for me, and so I turned and took what I supposed was the right direction. I had had enough of crawling, which was very slow work. I wanted to get out of it, and I made up my mind to rise and run. That does not sound very brave, but it was the better part of valour.

I started to run, as best I could; but I had hardly got going when a bullet struck me, as I supposed, and I collapsed alongside some of my own comrades.

Stretcher-bearers came up, in time, and I was carried to the field hospital. Then a curious discovery was made, which was, that a bullet had gone through four or five pleats of my kilt and had stuck in my leg, high up. This is the place where it struck and stuck and here’s the bullet, which the doctor easily pulled out with his fingers, for it had not penetrated deeply, owing, I think, to the resistance of the pleats of my kilt. Apart from this bullet wound I was struck by shrapnel four times, but I managed to keep going.

I left the field hospital the next day and joined an ambulance column which was shelled by the Germans as it went along. I escaped myself, but one of the waggons was completely wrecked.

Having recovered from my wound to a certain extent I went back to the regiment, but after a few days I had to be invalided home, and I have had a long and tedious spell in hospital.

There is one more incident I would like to mention by way of closing. We halted in a village in France where we saw some of the Turcos, one of whom was very noticeable because he was proudly wearing the greatcoat of a German officer which he had secured on the battlefield, after killing the officer.

While we halted, a batch of German prisoners was brought into the village, and they were put into a courtyard between two rows of cottages. No sooner had this been done than an old man rushed out, and if it had not been for the guard he would have hurled himself upon the prisoners and done his best to thrash them.

The act was so strange that I inquired the reason for the old man’s fury. And the answer I received was, “He remembers 1870.”