s of
the German cavalry division, fourteen in all; the Bays lost two-thirds
of their horses and many men. The Gunner Battery of ours was annihilated
(twenty left), but the guns were saved, as we held the ground at the
end. This was only a series of actions, as we have been at it all day,
and every day. My own squadron killed sixteen horses and nine Uhlans in
a space of 50 ft., and many others, inhabitants told me, were lying in a
wood close by, where they had crawled. We killed their officer, a big
Postdam Guard, shot through the forehead. L Battery fought their guns to
the last, 'Bradbury' himself firing a gun with his leg off at the knee;
a shell took off his other leg. He asked me then to be carried from the
guns so that the men could not hear or see him."

One of the 2nd Dragoons, wounded in this engagement, says the Bays were
desperately eager for the order to charge, and exultant when the bugle
sounded. "Off they went, 'hell for leather,' at the guns," is how he
described it. "There was no stopping them once they got on the move."

"No stopping them." That sums up what every eye-witness of the British
cavalry charges says. The coolness and dash of the men in action was
amazing. Their voices rang out as they spurred their horses on, and when
they crashed into the enemy, the British roar of exultation was
terrific, and the mighty clash of arms rent the air. "Many flung away
their tunics," writes a Yeomanry Officer with General Smith-Dorrien's
Division, "and fought with their shirt sleeves rolled up above the
elbow. Some of the Hussars and Lancers were almost in a horizontal
position on the off-side of their mounts when they were cutting right
and left with bare arms."

Most intimate details of the fighting at close quarters are given by
another officer. "I shall never forget," he says, "how one
splendidly-made trooper with his shirt in ribbons actually stooped so
low from his saddle as to snatch a wounded comrade from instant death at
the hands of a powerful German. And then, having swung the man right
round to the near side, he made him hang on to his stirrup leather
whilst he lunged his sword clean through the German's neck and severed
his windpipe as cleanly as ---- would do it in the operating theater."

And here is another incident: "A young lancer, certainly not more than
twenty, stripped of tunic and shirt, and fighting in his vest, charged a
German who had fired on a wounded man, and pierced him to the he