The cooks and
the commissariat men took their places in the trenches, and every
man who could hold a rifle fired that day for England's sake, though
England did not know her peril.
But the German losses were enormous also, and during those ten
days they sacrificed themselves with a kind of Oriental valour, such
as heaped the fields of Omdurman with Soudanese. The Kaiser was
the new Mahdi for whom men died in masses, going with fatalistic
resignation to inevitable death. After a lull for burning and burial, for
the refilling of great gaps in regiments and divisions, the enemy
moved against us with new masses, but again death awaited them, in
spite of all their guns, and the British held their ground.
They held their ground with superb and dauntless valour, and out of
the general horror of it all there emerges the fine, bright chivalry of
young officers and men who did amazing deeds, which read like fairy
tales, even when they are told soberly in official dispatches. In this
slaughter field the individual still found a chance now and then of
personal prowess, and not all his human qualities had been
annihilated or stupefied by the overwhelming power of artillery.
23
The town of Ypres was added to the list of other Belgian towns like
those in which I saw the ruin of a nation.
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