One of the most graphic pictures of the war is that of attack in the night related by a sergeant of the Worcester Regiment, who was wounded in the fierce battle of the Aisne.  He was on picket duty when the attack opened.  “It was a little after midnight,” he said “when the men ahead suddenly fell back to report strange sounds and movements along the front.  The report had just been made when we heard a rustling in the bushes near us.  We challenged and, receiving no reply, fired into the darkness.  Immediately the enemy rushed upon us, but the sleeping camp had been awakened by the firing, and our men quickly stood to arms.  As the heavy German guns began to thunder and the searchlights to play on our position we gathered that a whole Army corps was about to be engaged and, falling back upon the camp, we found our men ready.  No sooner had we reached the trenches than there rose out of the darkness in front of us a long line of white faces.  The Germans were upon us.  ‘Fire!’ came the order, and we sent a volley into them.  They wavered, and dark patches in their ranks showed that part of the white line had been blotted out.  But on they came again, the gaps filled up from behind.  At a hundred yards’ range, the first line dropped to fix bayonets, the second opened fire, and others followed.  We kept on firing and we saw their men go down in heaps, but finally they swarmed forward with the bayonet and threw all their weight of numbers upon us.  We gave them one terrible volley, but nothing could have stopped the ferocious impetus of their attack.  For one terrible moment our ranks bent under the dead weight, but the Germans, too, wavered, and in that moment we gave them the bayonet, and hurled them back in disorder.  It was then I got a bayonet thrust, but as I fell I heard our boys cheering and I knew we had finished them for the night.”

This is one of the few accounts that tell of the Germans using the bayonet on the offensive, and their experience of the businesslike way in which Tommy Atkins manipulates this weapon has given them a wholesome dread of such encounters.  Private G. Bridgeman, 4th Royal Fusiliers, tells of the glee with which his regiment received the order to advance with the bayonet.  “We were being knocked over in dozens by the artillery and couldn’t get our own back,” he writes,[C] “and I can tell you we were like a lot of schoolboys at a treat when we got the order to fix bayonets, for we knew we should fix them then.  We had about 200 yards to cover before we got near them, and then we let them have it in the neck.  It put us in mind of tossing hay, only we had human bodies.  I was separated from my neighbors and was on my own when I was attacked by three Germans.  I had a lively time and was nearly done when a comrade came to my rescue.  I had already made sure of two, but the third would have finished me.  I already had about three inches of steel in my side when my chum finished him.”