The shrapnel bullets came singing along with a 'Tue!
Tue!' Ah, that is a bad song! But most of all I feared the rifle-shots of
an infantry attack. I could not help glancing sideways at the sound of
that 'Zip! zip! zip!' There was something menacing and deadly in it,
and one cannot dodge the death which comes with one of these little
bullets. It is horrible!"
And yet this man, who had an abscess in his leg after riding for weeks
in his saddle and who had fought every day and nearly every night for
a fortnight, was distressed because he had to retire from his
squadron for awhile until his leg healed. In five days at the most he
would go back again to hell--hating the horror of it all, fearing those
screeching shells and hissing bullets, yet preferring to die for France
rather than remain alive and inactive when his comrades were
fighting.
Imagine the life of one of these cavalrymen, as I heard it described by
many of them in the beginning of the war.
They were sent forward on a reconnaissance--a patrol of six or eight.
The enemy was known to be in the neighbourhood. It was necessary
to get into touch with him, to discover his strength, to kill some of his
outposts, and then to fall back to the division of cavalry and report the
facts.
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