Perhaps the most dashing and brilliant episode of the fighting is the exploit of the Black Watch at the battle of St. Quentin, in which they went into action with their old comrades, the Scots Greys.  Not content with the ordinary pace at which a bayonet charge can be launched against the enemy these impatient Highlanders clutched at the stirrup leathers of the Greys, and plunged into the midst of the Germans side by side with the galloping horsemen.  The effect was startling, and those who saw it declare that nothing could have withstood the terrible onslaught.  “Only a Highland regiment could have attempted such a movement,” said an admiring English soldier who watched it, and the terrible gashes in the German ranks bore tragic testimony to the results of this double charge.  The same desperate maneuver, it may be recalled, was carried out at Waterloo and is the subject of a striking and dramatic battle picture.

Though all the letters from men in the Highland regiments speak contemptuously of the rifle fire of the Germans, they admit that in quantity, at least, it is substantial.  “They just poured lead in tons into our trenches,” writes one, “but, man, if we fired like yon they’d put us in jail.”  The German artillery, however, is described as “no canny.”  The shells shrieked and tore up the earth all around the Highlanders, and accounted for practically all their losses.

Narrow escapes were numerous.  An Argyll and Sutherland Highlander got his kilt pierced eight times by shrapnel, one of the Black Watch had his cap shot off, and while another was handling a tin of jam a bullet went clean into the tin.  Jocular allusions were made to these incidents, and somebody suggested labeling the tin “Made in Germany.”

Even the most grim incidents of the war are lit up by some humorous or pathetic passage which illustrates the fine spirits and even finer sympathies of the Highlanders.  Lance-Corporal Edmondson, of the Royal Irish Lancers, mentions the case of two men of the Argyll and Sutherlands, who were cut off from their regiment.  One was badly wounded, but his comrade refused to leave him, and in a district overrun by Germans, they had to exist for four days on half-a-dozen biscuits.

“But how did you manage to do it?” the unwounded man was asked, when they were picked up.

“Oh, fine,” he answered.

“How about yourself, I mean?” the questioner persisted in asking.

“Oh, shut up,” said the Highlander.

The truth is he had gone without food all the time in order that his comrade might not want.

Then there is a story from Valenciennes of a poor scared woman who rushed frantically into the road as the British troops entered the town.  She had two slight cuts on the arm, and was almost naked—­the result of German savagery.  When she saw the soldiers she shrank back in fear and confusion, whereupon one of the Highlanders, quick to see her plight, tore off his kilt, ripped it in half, and wrapped a portion around her.  She sobbed for gratitude at this kindly thought and tried to thank him, but before she could do so the Scot, twisting the other half of the kilt about himself to the amusement of his comrades, was swinging far along the road with his regiment.