The Market Square Woburn [Z1130]
Sunday 30th August 1914: Two men from Woburn have contacted us with their
experiences at the Battle of Mons, fought last Sunday and afterwards. Private
F. Pickering of 1st Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry was in action
for nine hours alongside a canal. During the retreat he had to fight at
intervals as the Germans pressed close behind until Wednesday morning when he
sustained his wounds. A bullet passed through his arm and then through his
thigh, making a nasty wound in its exit near the groin. He happened to be
carrying a knife in his pocket which belonged to his lately deceased father and
in his opinion that knife saved him from more severe injuries, as the bullet struck
the haft, chipping part of it away, and thus being deflected. The wound bled
profusely, but he struggled along, at times dropping from loss of blood. A
corporal of the 5th Lancers, with two troopers, noticing that he was badly
hurt, cut away his trousers from the wounds and bandaged him up. Private
Pickering gratefully accepted the corporal’s offer of a ride, and after going
between five and six miles, they reached an army ambulance*.
He was then conveyed on a stretcher to the train for le
Havre, and afterwards by hospital ship to England. He said the enemy’s
charges were terrific, and their fire unceasing. They had no time to finish and
occupy their trenches and a great part of the fighting and retirement was in
open country. The final impression before exhaustion was some neighbouring
troops calling out “Good old Cornwalls”. It will be a lifelong regret to him
that he did not ascertain the name of the corporal of the 5th Lancers, to whom
he is confident he owes his life**.
Private W.
Stanford joined his regiment, 1st Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers, at Newcastle. He was in the
street fighting at Mons
and was among the company that lined the now famous canal. It was during the
fighting on Sunday afternoon that he received a wound in the leg from shrapnel
shell, in addition to injuries from a sprained ankle. He crawled through two
potato fields – the firing being so incessant that to expose oneself meant
certain death – and reached safety. He was taken to the base hospital at Rouen and reached Southampton
on the hospital ship saint Patrick. He says that he saw men who had had their
hands cut off by the Germans. Only those who have been in the thick of it can
realise the horror of fighting, and the piteous sights to be seen on every
side. The fighting in the trenches was terrible – his own rifle was smashed to
pieces in his hands, and he thought his time had come. On one occasion the man
next to him, who had just been talking to him, was killed instantly, uttering
never a word. Like his townsmate Private Stanford has gone back cheerfully to
face it again and fully expects to be in the front within a week***.
Today the
1st Bedfords marched another thirteen miles or
so to the village
of Croutoy, leaving in pitch
darkness at 2.30 am. Our contact states that his company is billeted in the
local chateau: “The place is owned by a very decent old man (a carpenter) and
his wife by the name of Veillet. The company itself is in the orchard. The
billets are very much overcrowded as there are about 4,000 men in the village
which could only really accommodate about 1,000. We are, however, very
comfortable in a wood shed”.
Sources: X550/2/5; X550/2/7;
Bedfordshire Times 2nd October 1914
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