UNDER FIRE!

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2494, 22 June 1915, Page 6

UNDER FIRE!

RELATION OF EXPERIENCES WHAT IT FEELS LIKE What does it feel liko to bo under fire? Men with different temperaments supply different answers. Some say tho.y like it, some say they get into a blue funk, and some say they had no feelings at all, and that having to write about them later, they tried to analyse their feelings, and failing, they manufactured some to suit tho occasion. The letters to their relations of the Australian soldiers at tho Dardanelles may bo taken as an honest expression of opinion of the writers. A writer in the Sydney "Sun" gives some of them:— Cor|)oral G. E. Nash, 3rd Battalion, Ist Infantry Brigade.—lt was hell. Tho firo never ceased for a second. My pals ivore dying and wounded all around mo, but no one was afraid to die. Private F. Gale.—A battleship was shelling thorn. Wo were enjoying the fun. Wo thought it great sport, when all at once a big gun fired from tho shore and wo heard a bang and a sound like an airship going over our heads, and then wo saw the water fly up into tho air about 50 or GO feet high just beside the ship. We thought it was the end of us. The shells wore bursting all around us, and we expected to be blown to pieces every minute. We have no fear of war —in fact wo don't get timo to bo frightened. Wo don't seem to see danger now. Private Hughes, 4tli Battalion, Ist Brigade.—lt is a fearful sight to see comrades falling down dead on either side of .you and expecting every minuto to go yourself. Private W. Dolly.—You never think of death, although bullets whiz past your ears and shells burst all along tho line.

Mr. Harry Gulletfc, formerly of Sydney, and now official Australian correspondent with tho British Army in France.—There was no disposition to got a bullet from an unseen foe. Not until you have been in the area a few days do you got over the sense of everpresent danger, which is so much increa_sed by the spells of silence. Lieutenant E. Spargo, of Melbourne, who, in the early stages of tho fighting was wounded. —Then we had our first taste of the sensation of having enemy's shells whistling overhead. Every man of us was pale. I tell you 'it is quite a funny feeling, 'but, looking round, smiles began to reappear; and then our lads commenced to punch themselves to make sure they were really under fire. They had been disappointed so often that now they could hardly believe they had the real thing. I heard one man say, "Saida, the dinkum oil at last; no more furpheys," and that was the feeling all round. . . . What does it feel like? Imagine what a beehive sounds like wlien disturbed—buzz, buzz, and zip, zip, and ping, ping. But it is marvellous how used one gets to fire. We soon learn that the bullet we hear does not matter, as it has passed. I had gone about 10 yards when crash—a sledge-hammer struck me in the region of the heart. I said, "That's through .the heart, I'm dead," was perfectly satisfied, and commenced to die. I made no elaborate swan-song, but thought of the hard luck it was to little mother. All of a sudden I found I was better. My dying was only a temporary faint. I thought I must be only bruised. I put my band under my coat and felt a little warm blood. A man next to me named Williams, an Irishman, I think, opened my tunic, and there was a small neat hole. I was again certain I was shot through the heart, and wondered more why I wasn't dead. When Lieutenant Spargo wrote a few days later ho hoped to be back at the front within a week! Lieutenant W. D. S. Manger, sth Battalion.—Tho sound of the Queen Elizabeth's guns was awful, and made me jump every time. Private F. j. Walsh, Bth Battalion.— While the Turks were putting these shells into us our big Queen Elizabeth was blowing forts to pieces. I tell you, dad, it. put a funny feeling around your heart, but wo all seem to look at it the same way. Sergeant A. H. J. Howlctt, a prominent playing member of the Port Melbourne Football Club. —I feel just tho same as I used to feel before going on the football field—all excitement and dying to bo at it. ... I had five days' fighting before I was woimded— five awful days they were, too. I enjoyed it, thought Private W. H. Snook, sth Battalion.— Gee! tilings did hum: but I soon got used to the whizz of t!ie bullets. It is the shrapnel that makes us duck. . , . I got a bullet in my arm. Bullets don't hurt much; you first feel as if someone had smacked you with a hammer, though not as much pain at the time as you would get if you were hammering nails and hit the wrong one.