Angels In War (The First World War) Part 2

More newspapers came in on the debate. They were the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Observer and many others.

Some reported that a dying soldier had said to a nurse, 'It's a funny thing, sister, isn't it, how the Germans say we had a lot of troops behind us.'

'Do they?' she said.

'Yes, the German prisoners ask "How could we break through your lines when you had thousands of troops behind you?" '

'Sister, I told them, "You must be joking! Thousands of troops! We were just a thin line of only two regiments, and nothing behind us." '

A sergeant major responded to this nurse saying that he'd heard an officer talking to a German prisoner who also spoke of the crowd of troops behind the British line. He said all the Germans had seen them.

The Church Times also published letters on this subject. One was from a Miss Campbell attending the wounded. She was bandaging up the head of a Lancaster Fusilier who was a Methodist when he told her, 'The phantom army was led on by a tall man with yellow hair. He was in golden armour and mounted on a white horse, and holding high his sword.'

A man sitting on the floor beside him butted in. 'It's true, Sister! We all saw it! It was just as the Germans were coming up over the hill like a solid wall in their thousands - then they all turned and fled, and although we were so few we rushed after them.'

Miss Campbell said that she also heard similar stories from Russian troops, two British officers, and three men of the Irish Guards.

The Church Times then published a letter by an objector named Mr Machin. In reply, a lieutenant colonel wrote: 'The British army was saved in a manner which puzzles the intellects of all soldiers.'

First published in Miracles & Angels, Dr E K Victor Pearce.