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Patrick Stewart Christie   Black Watch

THE BLACK WATCH CHARGE AT MONS.

DUNDEE SOLDIER DESCRIBES IT.

“Plunging bayonets into German soldiers twice your size and sleeping on top of dead men in trenches, fields, and on the roadside is a big change to hanging around Dundee docks, I can tell you,” said Patrick Stewart Christie, a nineteen-year-old Dundee lad, who resides in Gellatly Street, and who reached the city yesterday from the ranks of the Black Watch at the front, bearing a severe scar in the back, where a piece of shrapnel struck him.

“All I remember about that awful bayonet charge at Mons was me yelling like mad—we were all roaring like maniacs when we got within charging distance.  We had been lying in trenches filled with water, our boots, socks, and leggings had gone, and we were desperate to get into grips with the Germans.  When I saw poor Watson, who lived in the Blackness Road, being felled to the ground by a mass of shell that came hurtling through the air my blood boiled over.  Poor chap, he was standing eating bully beef and biscuits when he let out a piercing scream.  He was caught in the abdomen, and he only lived a few minutes.

“I was one of the party told off to dig a four-feet hole for him.  They fell thicker after that, and we had no time to bury them.  Whenever we got chance of a wink of sleep we dropped down just where we were—beside our lifeless mates.  That lasted for five awful nights.  No wonder we were mad with passion when we rushed into Mons and felt our bayonets piercing the thick overcoats of the helmeted Germans.”

Dundee Courier 17th October 1914