The fighting went on all through the night and again next morning, and
the British force was compelled to retreat. In the dark, Private Smiley,
who was wounded, lost his regiment, and was picked up by a battery of
the Royal Field Artillery who gave him a lift. But he didn't rest long,
he says, for "I'm damned if they didn't go into action ten minutes
afterwards with me on one of the guns."

Some fine exploits are also given to the credit of the Black Watch.
They, too, were in the thick of it at Mons--"fighting like gentlemen,"
as one of them puts it--and the Gordons and Argyll and Sutherlands also
suffered severely. In fact, the Highland regiments appear to have been
singled out by the Germans as the object of their fiercest attacks, and
all the way down to the Aisne they have borne the brunt of the
fighting. Private Fairweather, of the Black Watch, gives this account of
an engagement on the Aisne: "The Guards went up first and then the
Camerons, both having to retire. Although we had watched the awful
slaughter in these regiments, when it was our turn we went off with a
cheer across 1,500 yards of open country. The shelling was terrific and
the air was full of the screams of shrapnel. Only a few of us got up to
200 yards of the Germans. Then with a yell we went at them. The air
whistled with bullets, and it was then my shout of '42nd forever!'
finished with a different kind of yell. Crack! I had been presented with
a souvenir in my knee. I lay helpless and our fellows retired over me.
Shrapnel screamed all around, and melinite shells made the earth shake.
I bore a charmed life. A bullet went through the elbow of my jacket,
another through my equipment, and a piece of shrapnel found a resting
place in a tin of bully beef which was on my back. I was picked up
eventually during the night, nearly dead from loss of blood."