DISPATCH RIDER'S TRAGIC END

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2343, 28 December 1914, Page 6

DISPATCH RIDER'S TRAGIC END

A - correspondent,' writing to' a London newspaper, 'discloses the following tragedy:—"A .very serious warning needs to be given to officers who have lately received their commissions and aro now. engaged in the deplorably difficult task of providing their own outfit. Swords are almost non-existent, and revolvers, of course, have all along been far from easy to obtain. It is this latter circumstance which has produced the most grievous tragedy of ,the war, where individuals are concerned. An undergraduate of one of the most-fam-ous of Oxford, colleges was among tho earliest to go to the front, as a motorcyclist dispatch rider, and, being unable to obtain a, revolver of service pattern, he selected a Colt. tering an ambush, he was taken prisoner by the Germans, who, in confiscating his revolver, noticed that it was not of service pattern,, and that his ammunition was not nickel-coated. On the strength of this: they charged him" with -using- dum-duin bullets, and promptly hanged him. So bitter a price for patriotic enthusiasm can rarely nave been paid hy a young Englishman, and, inasmuch as thousands or the brightest and best young men of tho country have answered to duty's cal! who had previously no great knowledge of military matters, but have, nevertheless, been invested with the responsibility of providing their.own outfit, the melancholy occurrence above 1 , described cannot be made too widely known."