rad! Kamerad!"

A company of the 8th Gordons were among the first into Loos, led by
some of those Highland officers I have mentioned on another page. It
was "Honest John" who led one crowd of them, and he claims now, with
a laugh, that he gained his Military Cross for saving the lives of two
hundred Germans. "I ought to have got the Royal Humane Society's medal,"
he said. Those Germans--Poles, really, from Silesia--came swarming out
of a house with their hands up. But the Gordons had tasted blood. They
were hungry for it. They were panting and shouting, with red bayonets,
behind their officer.

That young man thought deeply and quickly. If there were "no quarter" it
might be ugly for the Gordons later in the day, and the day was young,
and Loos was still untaken.

He stood facing his own men, ordered them sternly to keep steady. These
men were to be taken prisoners and sent back under escort. He had his
revolver handy, and, anyhow, the men knew him. They obeyed, grumbling
sullenly.

There was the noise of fire in other parts of the village, and the
tap-tap-tap of machine-guns from many cellars. Bombing-parties of Scots
silenced those machine-gunners at last by going to the head of the
stairways and flinging down their hand-grenades. The cellars of Loos
were full of dead.

In one of them, hours after the fighting had ceased among the ruins of
the village, and the line of fire was forward of Hill 70, a living man
still hid and carried on his work. The colonel of one of our forward
battalions came into Loos with his signalers and runners, and
established his headquarters in a house almost untouched by shell-fire.
At the time there was very little shelling, as the artillery officers on
either side were afraid of killing their own men, and the house seemed
fairly safe for the purpose of a temporary signal-station.

But the colonel noticed that shortly after his arrival heavy shells
began to fall very close and the Germans obviously were aiming directly
for this building. He ordered the cellars to be searched, and three
Germans were found. It was only after he had been in the house for forty
minutes that in a deeper cellar, which had not been seen before, the
discovery was made of a German officer who was telephoning to his own
batteries and directing their fire. Suspecting that the colonel and his
companions were important officers directing general operations, he had
caused the shells to fall upon the house knowing t