through my shirt at the back and never
touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between
the wheels to stop bullets.

We were there, all busy fighting, when an airship came right
over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot
of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the
shells were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line
and saw the German guns coming toward us. We turned our two
centre guns on them and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I
saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.

Just after that a shell burst right over our gun. That one got
me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I
could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off;
you see, they got completely around us. I went about two miles
and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin Hospital.
We were shelled out of there about 2 in the morning, and then
taken in a train and taken down to a plain near Rouen. Next
morning we were put on a ship for dear old England.

The First German Prisoners

[From The London Times.]

_The following letter from a soldier at the front who has
taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of
Paris, Aug. 16:_

We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The
army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action.
We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have
noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least
bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They
have been told a thousand phantasmagoria--that France had declared war,
that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and
one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his
honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols,
and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start
off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they
had no desire to share a like fate.

The prisoners are gentle and calm, and follow with their eyes the bits
of bread which are passed about near them and which one gives them, and
they eat them voraciously. For two days they have only received two
rations of coffee. Their appetite is so great that, though in presence
of a French officer th