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On Something by Hilaire Belloc
page 67 of 199 (33%)
a very great opinion of Money; but he deplores the fact that Money's
address to his soldiery was couched "in a jargon which they could not even
begin to understand." Money does not tell us that in his account of the
fighting, but he does tell us some very interesting things, which reveal
him as a man at once energetic and exceedingly simple. He left the guns
to Galbaud, remarking that no one but a gunner could attend to that sort
of thing, which was sound sense; but the Volunteers, the Line, and the
Cavalry he looked after himself, and when the first attack was made he
gave the order to fire from the batteries. Just as they were blazing away
Dillon, who was far off but his superior, sent word to the batteries to
cease firing. Why, nobody knows. At any rate the orderly galloped up and
told Money that those were Dillon's orders. On which Money very charmingly
writes:

"I told him to go back and tell General Dillon that I commanded there, and
that whilst the enemy fired shot and shell on me _I_ should continue
to fire back on them." A sentence that warms the heart. Having thus
delivered himself to the orderly, he began pacing up and down the parapet
"to let my men see that there was not much to be apprehended from a
cannonade."

You may if you will make a little picture of this to yourselves. A great
herd of volunteers, some of whom had never been under fire, the rest
of whom had bolted miserably at Verdun a few days before, men not yet
soldiers and almost without discipline: the batteries banging away in the
wood behind them, in front of them a long earthwork at which the enemy
were lobbing great round lumps of iron and exploding shells, and along
the edge of this earthwork an elderly gentleman from Norfolk, in England,
walking up and down undisturbed, occasionally giving orders to his army,
and teaching his command a proper contempt for fire.
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