rifle shooting is rotten; I
don't believe they could hit a haystack at 100 yards.

We find their field artillery very good; we don't like their
shrapnel; but I noticed that some did not burst; if one shell
that came over me had burst. I should have been blown to
atoms. I thanked the Lord it did not. I also heard our men
singing that famous song, "Get Out and Get Under." I know that
for an hour in our trench it would make any one keep under,
what with their shells and machine guns. Many poor fellows
went to their death like heroes.

The writer of the following letter, too, was telling of Mons. To friends
far away, at peaceful Barton-on-Humber, he wrote:

Just a line to tell you I have returned from the front, and I
can tell you we have had a very trying time of it. I must also
say I am very lucky to be here. We were fighting from Sunday,
23d, to Wednesday evening, on nothing to eat or drink--only
the drop of water in our bottles which we carried.

No one knows--only those that have seen us could credit such a
sight, and if I live for years may I never see such a sight
again. I can tell you it is not very nice to see your chum
next to you with half his head blown off. The horrible sights
I shall never forget. There seemed nothing else only certain
death staring us in the face all the time. I cannot tell you
all on paper. We must, however, look on the bright side, for
it is no good doing any other.

There are thousands of these Germans, and they simply throw
themselves at us. It is no joke fighting seven or eight to
one. I can tell you we have lessened them a little, but there
are millions more yet to finish.

Of the battle that reddened the foam of the North Sea during the last
days of August many a seaman recorded his impressions. And what curious
things stuck in the memories of the weary, powder-stained survivors!
"The funny thing which you should have seen," wrote Midshipman Hartley
to his parents, "was all the stokers grubbing around after the action
looking for bits of shell." And a seaman on H.M.S. Hearty wrote:

Two cooks were in the galley of the Arethusa, just having
their rum, when a shell killed one and blew the other's arm
off. A funny thing, they've got a clock hanging up; it smashed
the glass and one hand, but the blooming thing's still going.

There