It was the fighting of men in the open, armed with bayonets, rifles,
and bombs, against men invisible and in hiding, with machine-guns.
Small groups of Scots, like packs of wolves, prowled around the
houses, where the lower rooms and cellars were crammed with Germans,
trapped and terrified, but still defending themselves. In some of the
houses they would not surrender, afraid of certain death, anyhow, and
kept the Scots at bay awhile until those kilted men flung themselves
in and killed their enemy to the last man. Outside those red-brick
houses lay dead and wounded Scots. Inside there were the curses and
screams of a bloody vengeance. In other houses the machine-gun
garrisons ceased fire and put white rags through the broken windows,
and surrendered like sheep. So it was in one house entered by a little
kilted signaler, who shot down three men who tried to kill him. Thirty
others held their hands up and said, in a chorus of fear, "Kamerad!
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.
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