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Updated: May 9, 2025
Starting out next morning, I made a bee-line for the coast. I soon began to hear the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and artillery on my right opened fire on the German position, and then the heavy boom, boom of the guns from the sea. Looking in that direction, I discerned several of our battleships opening fire, the shells giving a fearful shriek as they passed overhead.
The sky was lit up as if by the sunrise of the day of doom, and thirty miles away our road was lighted by the lurid glare. Our way led through woods, and amongst the trees we could hear the crack and see the flash of rifle-fire. More than once the whiz of a bullet urged us to hurry on.
Without asking questions, I did so by sprawling full length in a deep wheel-rut, but as I had previously had a mud-bath, a little more or less did not matter. I wriggled myself towards the cover of the barn, when a sharp volley of rifle-fire broke out on my left. Gaining shelter, I asked the soldier the reason of the fusillade. "Uhlan outposts, monsieur," replied the man laconically.
A perfect hail of rifle-fire riddled the air all about him, but still he labored with sweat streaming down his face all blackened with dirt and cement. From Nissr, far above, cries and shouts rang down at him, mingled with the sharp spitting of the machine-guns from the lower gallery.
Yakob wanted to stop, but the captain would not let him, but rapped him over the head again with his knuckles. The soldiers lay in heaps. The rest wavered, fell back, hid in the ditch or threw themselves down. The rifle-fire came nearer, the outlines and faces of the advancing enemy could already be distinguished. Another blow on the head stretched Yakob to the ground, and he feigned death.
A pom-pom of ours is now popping away just ahead, and there is a good deal of rifle-fire. We and the convoy were at once moved to a position close under a kopje between us and the enemy. Shells are coming over pretty fast, but I don't see how they can reach us here. A most curious one has just come sailing very slowly overhead, and growling and hiccoughing in the strangest way.
The gray dots and shiny spots leaped up magically and appallingly into men. German soldiers! Boches! Huns on a charge! They were many, but wide apart. They charged, running low. Machine-gun rattle, rifle-fire, and strangled shouts blended along the line. From the charging Huns seemed to come a sound that was neither battle-cry nor yell nor chant, yet all of them together.
There is in any case no time for most of us to creep up there and look on the city below; we are tied to the barricades and trenches down in the flat among the ruins, chained to our posts by a never-ending rifle-fire. 13th August, 1900. It is the 13th, that fateful number, and there are some who are divided between hope and fear.
He didn't care, the Colonel said, where he went or how. If it was through rifle-fire or mitrailleuse he went on his hands and knees he wriggled on his stomach. If it was shrapnel he took his chance.
I enjoyed that simple meal as much as the finest dinner I have ever had placed before me. Whilst eating, a messenger came and warned us to be prepared for an attack. Heavy rifle-fire was taking place, both on the right and left of our position. "Well," thought I, "this is a good start; they might have waited for daylight, I could then film their proceedings."
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