God knows what tales they had been told about us Sikhs. I read their
faces as I rode. Fear is an ugly weapon, sahib, whose hilt is more
dangerous than its blade. If our officers had told us such tales
about Germans as their officers had told them about us, I think
perhaps we might have feared to charge.

Numbers were as nothing that night. Speed, and shock, and
unexpectedness were ours, and lies had prepared us our reception. D
Squadron rode behind Ranjoor Singh like a storm in the night--swung
into line beside the other squadrons--and spurred forward as in a
dream. There was no shouting; no war-cry. We rode into the Germans
as I have seen wind cut into a forest in the hills--downward into
them, for once we had leapt the trench the ground sloped their way.
And they went down before us as we never had the chance of mowing
them again.

So, sahib, we proved our hearts--whether they were stout, and true,
as the British had believed, or false, as the Germans planned and
hoped. That was a night of nights--one of very few such, for the
mounted actions in this war have not been many. Hah! I have been
envied! I have been called opprobrious names by a sergeant of
British lancers, out of great jealousy! But that is the way of the
British. It happened later, when the trench fighting had settled
down in earnest and my regiment and his were waiting our turn behind
the lines. He and I sat together on a bench in a great tent, where
some French artists gave us good entertainment.

He offered me tobacco, which I do not use, and rum, which I do not
drink. He accepted sweetmeats from me. And he called me a name that
would make the sahib gulp, a word that I suppose he had picked up