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Updated: May 26, 2025
No troops will stand against machine-gun fire in the open when no object can be achieved. It was idle to repeat the attack or send fresh companies to share the forlorn enterprise. Before dawn our troops were in their old positions. In the attack the sergeant-majors of both A and B Companies were hit. Of the officers, Barton, commanding B, and Tilly, of A, were killed.
There was hardly a difference between them and some German prisoners I saw, yellow-haired as they were, with fair, freckled, sun-baked skins. They told me they were glad to be out in France. Anything was better than training at home. "I like Germans more'n sergeant-majors," said one young yokel, and the others shouted with laughter at his jest.
The pupils, an unruly lot, were in the habit of burying in the earth of the fortifications which they were digging, the implements which had been issued to them for the work. General Bellavene, the head of the school, a very strict man, ordered that the implements should be issued to the sergeant-majors, who would then be accountable for them.
The F.A.N.Y.s had almost given us up for good, and were all very envious when they heard of our adventures. Towards the end of that month the "Britannic," a hospital ship, was torpedoed. These men, under one of their own Sergeant-Majors, sat on the edge of the platform until all the wounded were on board, and then were marched on into a little wooden shelter specially erected.
The battle, with its preliminary operations, cost us some of our bravest sergeant-majors and sergeants Cookson, Arnott, Marvin, Mundy, Balfe, Webster. Sergeant Lindsay lost his leg. Of them and of all the men of the 42nd Division, who gave their lives in this action, any praise is superfluous.
Moreover, the Duke of Medina dissatisfied with the want of discipline and of good seamanship hitherto displayed in his fleet now took occasion to send a serjeant-major, with written sailing directions, on board each ship in the Armada, with express orders to hang every captain, without appeal or consultation, who should leave the position assigned him; and the hangmen were sent with the sergeant-majors to ensure immediate attention to these arrangements.
The king, in the hottest of it, animated his men by his presence, and Tilly, to give him his due, did the same; for the execution was so great, and so many officers killed, General Altringer wounded, and two sergeant-majors killed, that at last Tilly himself was obliged to expose himself, and to come up to the very face of our line to encourage his men, and give his necessary orders.
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