I saw old women coming down lanes
where 5.9's were bursting and where our gunners were getting into
action. I saw young mothers packing their babies and their bundles
into perambulators while shells came hurtling over the thatched roofs
of their cottages. I stood on the Mont des Chats looking down upon a
wide sweep of battle, and saw many little farmsteads on fire and
Bailleul one torch of flame and smoke.
There was an old monastery on the Mont des Chats which had been in the
midst of a cavalry battle in October of 1914, when Prince Max of
Hesse, the Kaiser's cousin, was mortally wounded by a shot from one of
our troopers. He was carried into the cell of the old prior, who
watched over him in his dying hours when he spoke of his family and
friends. Then his body was borne down the hill at night and buried
secretly by a parish priest; and when the Kaiser wrote to the Pope,
desiring to know the whereabouts of his cousin's grave, the priest to
whom his message was conveyed said, "Tell the Kaiser he shall know
when the German armies have departed from Belgium and when reparation
has been made for all their evil deeds.
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