-at-home
readers with a desire for participation in this great adventure.

But, on the other hand, such passages as "The dead were piled up in the
trenches about ten deep, and there were trenches seven miles long," and
"Our Maxim gun officer tried to fix his gun up during their murderous
fire, but he got half his face blown away," are not likely to make
fighting seem a pleasant occupation. It is true that the dead referred
to in the first of these passages are the enemy's dead; still, there is
a wholesale quality about those seven-mile trenches filled with dead ten
deep that is not a recruiting allurement.

Nor is this letter, vivid in its realism, likely to make those not
already warlike eager to enlist. It was sent to his parents at
Ilfracombe by Private William Burgess of the Royal Field Artillery:

We left our landing place for the front on the Tuesday and got
there on Saturday night. The Germans had just reached Liege
then, and we got into action on the Sunday morning. The first
thing we did was to blow up a bridge to stop the Germans from
crossing. Then we came into action behind a lot of houses
attached to the main street. We were there about ten minutes
when the houses started to fall around us. The poor people
were buried alive. I saw poor children getting knocked down by
bursting shells.

The next move was to advance across where there was a Red
Cross hospital. They dropped shells from airships and fired on
it until the place was burned down to the ground. Then they
got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind
them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we
were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on
Tuesday night. We camped there until 2 o'clock next morning.

Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all
got together and cleared the field for action. [The letter
mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the
Germans were in the proportion of three to one.] We cut them
down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps and
dropping like hail. The Colonel passed along the line and
said, "Stick it, boys."

I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades
dropping down--some getting their heads blown off and others
their legs and arms. I was fighting with my shirt off. A piece
of shell went right