Norman Ten Hundred by A. Stanley Blicq

Author:A. Stanley Blicq [Blicq, A. Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I
ISBN: 9780857063731
Google: hazOcQAACAAJ
Publisher: Leonaur Limited
Published: 2010-10-15T00:56:20+00:00

Cambrai

Rues Vertes was retaken!

In the outskirts of this village a number of the draft were isolated, became tangled in one great bloody mêlée with the angrily retreating enemy. There was nothing for it but a fight to the death.

Through the glasses they could be seen to hold off the Hun for a few brief minutes, met him in a ghastly lunging of bayonets, from which beads of blood were dropping … but they went under one by one, until one thick-set lad remained, seized two Huns one after the other by the neck, twisted them with his own hands and went over the Divide, a bayonet through his heart.

But their example put the fear of death into the enemy and for an hour the thinning line of Normans had no attack.

He reformed, sent a large number of machine-guns with his first wave, concentrated a fearful artillery fire on the villages, and swept forward. The same fire met him, again the lines wavered, but that hail of lead was more than the men could withstand. They went back—many of the gunners without their machine-guns, not back a hundred yards or so but almost out of RIFLE RANGE.

The artillery fire had created havoc among the Normans. Twenty figures writhed in agony in so many feet, a stream of blood-soaked lads were moving slowly away towards Marcoing. One Lewis-gun team was lying about in all directions, forms distorted, limbs missing and great bare stretches of red flesh showing with sickening brilliancy of colour—and the gun itself was UNTOUCHED. Irony of fate.

On the sloping grass seven inert khaki forms could be counted, on the lower levels another five: stretched across the mound to the east of the canal a dozen or more were visible at intervals of eight or so yards. All from ONE spot without moving the head.

The casualties were more than the untouched.

Weary Normans, knowing that YOUR turn would not be long acoming—and you would not be sorry when it did—knowing, too, that behind was no relief force. You had to HOLD, there was no alternative. And each face lifted earnestly in the light was set of jaw. God grant them life and they would hold until the Hun himself called "Halt!"

Ammunition had come up … therefore was there only one factor by which they might fail—no men to use the rifles. They spoke sometimes in the pauses.

"Wonder wot they'll say at 'ome about all these yere dead?"

"Dunno."

"Anyhow, we ain't done bad work."

"No; an' we'll hang on yere like 'ell, even if they brings the ole bloomin' German army."

"Sure. If Jerry thinks 'e can show us 'ow to shoot 'e has made a 'ell of a outer."

"D'you know," shyly, "we 'ave done somethin' big!"

"Yes; I s'pose we 'ave."

The very men who had fought on and made good in face of odds that no man in his senses would have bet on at a thousand to one chance, opined that they had "done something big," or at least they "s'posed so."

No Regiment in the Empire, or out of it, could have done more.

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