"The Germans," he states, "were just as thick as the Hielan' heather,
and by weight of numbers (something like twenty-five to one) tried to
force us back. But we had our orders and not a man flinched. We just
stuck there while the shells were bursting about us, and in the very
thick of it we kept on singing Harry Lauder's latest. It was terrible,
but it was grand--peppering away at them to the tune of 'Roamin' in the
Gloamin'' and 'The Lass o' Killiecrankie.' It's many a song about the
lassies we sang in that 'smoker' wi' the Germans."

According to another Highlander "those men who couldn't sing very well
just whistled, and those who couldn't whistle talked about football and
joked with each other. It might have been a sham fight the way the
Gordons took it." With this memory of their undaunted gaiety it is sad
to think how the Gordons were cut up in that encounter. Their losses
were terrible. "God help them!" exclaims one writer. "Theirs was the
finest regiment a man could see."

But that was in the dark days of the long retreat, when the Highlanders,
heedless of their own safety, hung on to their positions often in spite
of the orders to retire, and avenged their own losses ten-fold by their
punishment of the enemy. Private Smiley, of the Gordons, describing the
German attacks, speaks of the devastating effects of the British fire.
"Poor devils!" he writes of the German infantry. "They advanced in
companies of quite 150 men in files five deep, and our rifle has a flat
trajectory up to 600 yards. Guess the result. We could steady our rifles
on the trench and take deliberate aim. The first company were mown down
by a volley at 700 yards, and in their insane formation every bullet was
almost sure to find two billets. The other companies kept advancing very
slowly, using their dead comrades as cover, but they had absolutely no
chance.... Yet what a pitiful handful we were against such a host!"