One of the 2nd Dragoons, wounded in this engagement, says the Bays were
desperately eager for the order to charge, and exultant when the bugle
sounded. "Off they went, 'hell for leather,' at the guns," is how he
described it. "There was no stopping them once they got on the move."

"No stopping them." That sums up what every eye-witness of the British
cavalry charges says. The coolness and dash of the men in action was
amazing. Their voices rang out as they spurred their horses on, and when
they crashed into the enemy, the British roar of exultation was
terrific, and the mighty clash of arms rent the air. "Many flung away
their tunics," writes a Yeomanry Officer with General Smith-Dorrien's
Division, "and fought with their shirt sleeves rolled up above the
elbow. Some of the Hussars and Lancers were almost in a horizontal
position on the off-side of their mounts when they were cutting right
and left with bare arms."

Most intimate details of the fighting at close quarters are given by
another officer. "I shall never forget," he says, "how one
splendidly-made trooper with his shirt in ribbons actually stooped so
low from his saddle as to snatch a wounded comrade from instant death at
the hands of a powerful German. And then, having swung the man right
round to the near side, he made him hang on to his stirrup leather
whilst he lunged his sword clean through the German's neck and severed
his windpipe as cleanly as ---- would do it in the operating theater."

And here is another incident: "A young lancer, certainly not more than
twenty, stripped of tunic and shirt, and fighting in his vest, charged a
German who had fired on a wounded man, and pierced him to the heart.
Seizing the German's horse as he fell, he exchanged it for his own which