With other
battalions they occupied the Mons salient, actually the point on which
the torrent of war first broke and for a brief moment spent itself. On
that still night it seemed to hang suspended as a great wave does
before falling. As the battalion lay in the shallow trench the pregnant
silence was at last broken by the high, clear call of a bugle, one
single long note, indescribably eerie and menacing, and then the
listening men heard the rustling tread of feet moving through the grass
with a steady, regular, ominous advance. The might of Germany was on the
move, and still the thin brown line lay tense and silent, until only
forty paces separated the two. Then, at a word, The Royals' line broke
into a storm of flame which swept the line of the advancing men as a
scythe sweeps through the corn; and for the British infantry the great
war had begun.
Mons was a victory; the German advance was held up temporarily. But all
night the British troops were being withdrawn. It was after five in the
morning before The Royals got their orders to move, and 'A' Company
claims to be the last of the British army to leave Mons.
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