Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/535

 CHAPTER II

SCENES AT WATERLOO BRIDGE

following is the personal narrative of a young chauffeur named John Burgess, who assisted in the defence of the barricade at Waterloo Bridge.

The statement was made to a reporter at noon on October 5, while he was lying on a mattress in the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, so badly wounded in the chest that the surgeons had given him up.

Around him were hundreds of wounded who, like himself, had taken part in the sudden rising of the Defenders, and who had fallen beneath the hail of the German Maxims. He related his story with difficulty, in the form of a farewell letter to his sister, who was a telegraph clerk at the Shrewsbury Post Office. The reporter chanced to be passing by the poor fellow, and, overhearing him asking for someone to write for him, volunteered to do so.

"We all did our best," he said, "every one of us. Myself, I was at the barricade for thirteen days—thirteen days of semi-starvation, sleeplessness, and constant tension, for we knew not, from one moment to another, when a sudden attack might be made upon us. At first our obstruction was a mere ill-built pile of miscellaneous articles, half of which would not stop bullets; but on the third day our men, superintended by several non-commissioned officers in uniform, began to put the position in a proper state of defence, to mount Maxims in the neighbouring houses, and to place explosives in the crown of two of the arches of 511