their attack. For one terrible moment our ranks bent under the dead
weight, but the Germans, too, wavered, and in that moment we gave them
the bayonet, and hurled them back in disorder. It was then I got a
bayonet thrust, but as I fell I heard our boys cheering and I knew we
had finished them for the night."

This is one of the few accounts that tell of the Germans using the
bayonet on the offensive, and their experience of the businesslike way
in which Tommy Atkins manipulates this weapon has given them a wholesome
dread of such encounters. Private G. Bridgeman, 4th Royal Fusiliers,
tells of the glee with which his regiment received the order to advance
with the bayonet. "We were being knocked over in dozens by the artillery
and couldn't get our own back," he writes,[C] "and I can tell you we
were like a lot of schoolboys at a treat when we got the order to fix
bayonets, for we knew we should fix them then. We had about 200 yards to
cover before we got near them, and then we let them have it in the neck.
It put us in mind of tossing hay, only we had human bodies. I was
separated from my neighbors and was on my own when I was attacked by
three Germans. I had a lively time and was nearly done when a comrade
came to my rescue. I had already made sure of two, but the third would
have finished me. I already had about three inches of steel in my side
when my chum finished him."

The charge of the Coldstream Guards at Le Cateau is another bayonet
exploit that ought to be recorded. "It was getting dark when we found
that the Kaiser's crush was coming through the forest to cut off our
force," a sergeant relates, "but we got them everywhere, not a single
man getting through. About 200 of us drove them down one street, and
didn't the devils squeal. We came upon a mass of them in the main
thoroughfare, but they soon lost heart and we actually climbed over