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Updated: June 28, 2025
For weeks we had been warned that the Germans were going to use asphyxiating gasses against us, but no one had ever dreamed that they would be so inhuman as to use gas that would kill, but they had done so, for the Turcos told us that many of their men had fallen dead where they stood.
They were a heartbreaking sight to behold. Chlorine gas killed! No wonder the poor ignorant Turcos fled. But the indomitable "Red Watch" held on. The sun rose from a lurid red sea in the east. It was now daylight and five German aeroplanes of the Albatross pattern rose in the German lines and started boldly across our territory.
The Canadians had not suffered so much from the gas as the French soldiers, but their flank was too exposed for them to do much effective work against the onrushing Teutons. The attempt to rally the Turcos failed. The Third Brigade could not withstand the attack of four divisions, and was forced inward from a point south of Poelcappelle until its left rested on the wood east of St. Julien.
Frank and Arab were blent in one inextricable mass as the charging squadrons encountered. The outer wings of the tribes were spared the shock, and swept on to meet the bayonets of Zouaves and Turcos as, at their swift foot-gallop, the Enfants Perdus of France threw themselves forward from the darkness.
It was obvious to me that there was a thrill of uneasiness in the military machine operating in the district. Troops were being hurried up in a north-westerly direction. A regiment of Algerians came swinging along the road. The sight of the Turcos put some heart into the fugitives. Those brown faces were laughing like children at the prospect of a fight.
An officer of Turcos was protected at Sedan; a cuirassier of Reichsoffen would have died, pierced in the heart by a bullet, if this bullet after passing though his pocket-book had not stayed its flight on reaching a little picture of Our Lady of Lourdes!
He was bronzed, but scarcely looked so after the red, brown, and black of the Zouaves and the Turcos, for his skin was naturally very fair, the features delicate, the eyes very soft for which M. Tata had growled contemptuously, "a woman's face" a long, silken chestnut beard swept over his chest; and his figure, as he leaned there in the blue and scarlet and gold of the Chasseurs' uniform, with his spurred heel thrust into the sand, and his arm resting on his knee, was, as Cigarette's critical eye told her, the figure of a superb cavalry rider; light, supple, long of limb, wide of chest, with every sinew and nerve firm-knit as links of steel.
All I know is this: about six o'clock this morning our outposts on the hills to the south began banging way in a great panic. They had been attacked, it seems, by the 4th Bavarian Division, Count Bothmer's, I believe. Our posts fell back to the town, where the 1st Turcos reinforced them at the railroad station. The artillery were at it on our left, too, and there was a most infernal racket.
When the Turcos had come streaming across the field, tearing through his company of Montreal Highlanders, he, together with Major Norsworthy, gallantly tried to rally these men, along with my adjutant. Drummond fell, together with his comrade, each a victim to a German bullet. No braver lad, no more ardent Highlander ever donned the tartan of the Black Watch than Lieutenant Guy Drummond.
They sleep on mouldy straw, have no sanitation, and in winter weather their coats, and sometimes even their tunics, were taken from them. Fortunately, reprisals need not come from us. Talk to Zouaves and Turcos and the French. God help Germany if they ever penetrate to the Rhine. A young man Mr.
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