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Their right was made up by the London Scottish, and behind came the Queen's Westminsters and the Kensingtons, who were to advance through their comrades to a farther objective. Across a wide No Man's Land they suffered from the bursting of heavy crumps, and many fell.
The number of the house was thirteen and we came here under gun fire on the 23rd. That meant bad luck to the Germans. Armentieres was a factory town. They made linen chiefly and there are several large weaving mills. The people were very friendly and cheered us along the way. We met a lot of English soldiers, the Westminsters, the Yorks, the Durhams and Sherwoods.
I should have said that just before I left, word had come in that Private Ford of "H" Company had been shot in the thigh. This was our first casualty. A bullet struck a British soldier of the Westminsters in the shoulder and cut into Ford's thigh, failing to go through. Ford was a fine brave man. He and another chum came over from the Edmonton Regiment just before we left Lark Hill.
Of Chertsey there is perhaps a gateway and part of a wall; of Sheen nothing; of Reading a few flints built into modern work; of Abingdon a gateway, and a buttress or two that long served to support a brewhouse; of Osney nothing, contrariwise, electric works and the slums of a modern town. All these were Westminsters.
At about the same time there was another very gallant piece of work being done by two men of the Queen's Westminsters above the Khurbet Subr ridge. When the battalion got to the first objective an enemy battery of 77's was found in action on the reverse slope of the hill.
The Queen's Westminsters on the left of the Kensingtons had cleared the Turks out of Ain Karim and then climbed up a steep spur to attack the formidable Khurbet Subr defences. They took the garrison completely by surprise, and those who did not flee were either killed or taken prisoners.
And thou, O England! exalted art thou among the nations, not for thy Oxfords and Westminsters; not for thy divines and saints and martyrs and poets; not for thy Hookers and Leightons and Cranmers and Miltons and Burkes and Lockes; not for thy Reformation; not for thy struggles for liberty, but for thy Manchesters and Birminghams, thy Portsmouth shipyards, thy London docks, thy Liverpool warehouses, thy mines of coal and iron, thy countless mechanisms by which thou bringest the wealth of nations into thy banks, and art enabled to buy the toil of foreigners and to raise thy standards on the farthest battlements of India and China.
Williamson, head-master in 1828, drew attention in a pamphlet to the proper costuming of the performers; and when, in 1847, there was a talk of abolishing the plays, a memorial signed by six hundred old "Westminsters" was sent in, stating it as their "firm and deliberate belief, founded on experience and reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster play cannot fail to prove prejudicial to the interests and prosperity of the school."
Lance-Corporal W.H. Whines of the Westminsters got along quickly and brought his Lewis gun to bear on the battery and, with an admirably directed fire, caused many casualties. Two gun teams were wiped out, either killed or wounded, by the corporal. At the same time Rifleman C.D. Smith, who had followed his comrade, rushed in on another team and bombed it.
The battery horses were near at hand, but while this one gun was escaping at the gallop the Westminsters' fire brought down one horse and two drivers, and I saw their bodies on the road as evidence of how the Westminsters had developed the art of shooting at a rapidly moving target.
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