had reached the fuse did the attempt succeed. As the bridge blew up
with a mighty roar, we looked and saw that the brave twelfth man had
also sacrificed his life."

During the long retreat from Mons the Middlesex Regiment got into an
awkward plight, and a bridge--the only one left to the Germans--had to
be destroyed to protect them. This was done by a sergeant of the
Engineers, but immediately afterwards his own head was blown away by a
German shell. "The brave fellow certainly saved the position," writes
one of the Middlesex men, "for if the Germans had got across that night
I'm afraid there would have been very few of us left."

Other daring incidents may be told briefly. One of the liveliest is
that of seven men of the Worcesters, who were told they could "go for a
stroll." While loitering along the road they encountered a party of
Germans, and captured them all without firing a shot. "We just covered
them with our rifles," writes Private Styles; "so simple!" Sir John
French relates a similar exploit of an officer who, while proceeding
along the road in charge of a number of led horses, received information
that there were some of the enemy in the neighborhood. Upon seeing them
he gave the order to charge, whereupon three German officers and 106 men
surrendered! On another occasion a portion of a supply column was cut
off by a detachment of German cavalry and the officer in charge was
summoned to surrender. He refused, and starting his motors off at full
speed dashed safely through.

Hairbreadth escapes are related in hundreds of letters, and they have a
dramatic quality that makes the ineffectual fires of imaginative fiction
burn very low. Sergeant E.W. Turner, West Kents, writes to his
sweetheart: "The bullet that wounded me at Mons went into one breast
pocket and came out of the other, and in its course passed through your
photo." Private G. Ryder vouches for this: "We were having what you
might call a dainty afternoon tea in the trenches under shell fire. The
mugs were passed round with the biscuits and the 'bully' as best they
could by the mess orderlies, but it was hard work messing through
without getting more than we wanted. My next-door neighbor, so to speak,
got a shrapnel bullet in his tin, and another two doors off had his
biscuit shot out of his hand." Lieutenant A.C. Johnstone, the Hants
county cricketer, after escaping other bullets and shells which were
dancing around him, was hit over the heart by