WITH THE FOURTH

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2547, 23 August 1915, Page 6

WITH THE FOURTH

A TROOPER'S LETTER FROM v CAIIIO. News of the doings of the Fourth Reinforcements in Egypt is oohveyed in a letter from Trooper Laurence Hamlin, of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles section of that reinforcement to his sister, Miss Hamlin, of Johnsonville. Writine from Cairo under date of August. 20 a Trooper Hamlin says:— "I have just returned from a sixteenmile ride. We buried our major today. He died of dysentery. When we landed he weighed over thirteen stone, and wo buried him to-day weighing barely over five. Dysentery is a terrible thing to be caught with in tho tropics. I was over at tho hospital yesterday talking to some of the :4th Reinforcement chaps from tho infantry who are back wounded. Two fellows who were tent-mates with me in Samoa aro killed. In one place tlio trenches aro only three yards apart and separted by two rows of sandbags. A major in tho Australian force led sis charges at this trench, when they first landed, and took it. but was killed jumping into it. JNow, althoueh we have taken that a dozen times since, wo cannot hold it. It is made in such a way that when the Turks holding it are killed or taken prisoners by our chaps, others m tho rear can turn machino guns on us and kill every man in the trench._ So wo have to bo contont with being three yards from them in a trench of our own iriaking, where the machine guns are not in. the position to got at lis, and throw bombs into their trench, and blow them out without leaving our own. Every now and again we jump into the enemy 3 trench at night, and finish them with tho bayonet, and jump back into our own before- tho machino - guns get to u-ork; but next day they put more men in. .