Ninth Lancers' Charge.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 22, 12 September 1914, Page 5

Ninth Lancers' Charge.

MURDEROUS FIRE FROM CONGEALED MACHINE GUNS.

1500 WENT OUT SINGING, AND 1300 PERISHED.

(Received 8.30 a.m.)

London, September 11

Details of the Ninth Lancers' charge which was cabled on the 3rd show that the Lancers went into action singing and shouting like schoolboys. Artillery fire emptied but a few saddles, and the guns seemed within reach, when the leaders suddenly came on tragedy. Full in the face of the ' cavalry the Germans opened a murderous fire from twenty concealed machine guns at a distance of not more than 150 yards. Yicomte De Vauvineux, who rode with the brigade as interpreter, was instantly killed. While the bulk of the brigade swerved to the right for 100 yards across the face of the guns, a few rode desperately on, bearing charmed lives, but only for a few yards, as wire entanglements were buried in the grass thirty yards from the front of the guns, and riding full into these the riders fell and were taken prisoners. Three regiments of the best British cavalry went into the charge, and at the end only 220 mustered out of the Lancers. A regiment of the Eighteenth Hussars and Fourth Dragoons also suffered severely, but not to the same extent.