Not an easy task! It quite often happened that only one man
out of six came back to tell the tale, surprised at his own luck. The
German scouts had clever tricks.
One day near Bethune they played one of them--a favourite one. A
friend of mine led six of his dragoons towards a village where Uhlans
had been seen. They became visible at a turn of the road, and after
firing a few shots with their carbines turned tail and fled. The French
dragoons gave chase, across some fields and round the edge of a
quiet wood. Suddenly at this point the Uhlans reined in their horses
and out of the wood came the sudden shattering fire of a German
quickfirer. Fortunately it was badly aimed, and my friend with his six
dragoons was able to gallop away from that infernal machine which
had so cleverly ambushed them.
There was no rest for the cavalry in those first days of the war. The
infantry had its bivouac every day, there was rest sometimes in the
trenches, but the cavalry had to push on always upon new
adventures to check the enemy in his advance.
A young Russian officer in the French dragoons told me that he had
been fighting since the beginning of the war with never more than
three hours sleep a night and often no sleep at all.
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