30
The Ypres Times.
the two miles to Externest as fast as they could go they arrived to find a strange and
bewildering scene before them. In the angle of the cross-roads near the rear of the Nonne-
boschen Wood they saw some French guns, silent and apparently deserted across the
road behind them were some English guns, also desertedtheir gunners were deployed
in front with riflesthe only men," said their commander, between the Germans
and Ypresthank God you've come
The wood itself was full of Prussians who had broken the 1st Division by sheer weight,
and flowed over their trenches many of them were now visible on the near edge of the
wood, but they seemed uncertain of their direction, and they had not yet discovered the
silent guns. Colonel Davies had the chance of a hundred years before him, and he took
it on the instant. He established the Regimental Headquarters on the right front of the
French guns, at the point where the road ran nearest to the rear angle of the wood. D
Company (Captain Tolson and Lieutenant Vere Spencer), he stationed for the moment
behind the guns as a reserve. B Company (Lieutenant Baines), and C Company (2nd-
Lieutenants Tylden-Pattenson and Titherington) were to charge, while A Company
(Captain Dillon, Lieutenant Pepys and 2nd-Lieutenant Pendavis) kept up a covering fire
on their left flank.
The four companies mustered, perhaps, 350 in allof the Prussian Guards there were
about 800, and the officers of the 52nd, as they charged, were struck by the immense
superiority of the enemy in physical bulkour men appeared to be only half their size.*
But there the superiority ended the Prussians had already met the 1st Guards Brigade,
and though their weight had carried them through the trenches, they had lost their sense
of direction, their cohesion, and sorfte part of their resolution. They were now face to face
with the finest light infantry in the World it is little shame to them that their courage
and their discipline were not equal to their need. In the hundredth year siijce Waterloo
the 52nd were not out to flinch or fumble they manoeuvred and fought with the swift
precision which alone could honour the memory of Moore and Colborne.
The open ground to be covered was some 300 yards as Baines and Tylden-Pattenson
crossed it with their slender converging lines the enemy had their chance, but Dillon's
fire pinned them in their covert then, when the two companies had rushed the edge of
the wood and were entering the dense undergrowth, he joined in on the left, and as the
thin line went forward, stretched to its utmost, Tolson came on with his company as
second line. The whole attack went with the old Light Division click even the wood
of Redinha was not cleared in more gallant style than this. The giants made no effective
stand the drive was carried through without a check, our men enjoying it, said one of
them, as if we were all beating the wood for pheasants, at the double." The comparison
was curiously apt, for an officer of the 1st Division has described how a remnant of the
1 st Brigade, hearing the firing in the wood, had posted themselves by their old trenches on
the other side, and waited, like the line of guns at a hot corner." When the beaters
approached, the first sign of life was a rise of pheasants on the edge of the wood, followed
by a rush of a few Germans, who were all shot down as they left the covert. The 52nd
saw nothing of this they drove straight out to the front, and found there a great number
of killed and wounded, with a few scattered men of the 1st Division, and further off, a
confused mass of Prussians occupying trenches under cover of artillery fire. Here, when
the wood was practically cleared. B Company lost their only officer, Lieutenant Baines,
wounded by shrapnel in the right shoulder. He was able, however, to walk the two miles
back to Regimental Headquarters, escorted by a Prussian officer and five other prisoners
of the Guards, who carried his equipment for him. To an English officer of another regiment
who met them at the cross-roads, this procession was, perhaps, the most surprising sight
of his life.
The front companies of the 52nd were now joined by some of the Northamptonshire
Regiment on the right, and some of the Connaught Rangers and the 5th Field Company,
Lieut. Titherington buried three who were over seven feet in height.
