A CHARMED LIFE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2838, 1 August 1916, Page 6

A CHARMED LIFE

INCIDENT OF LONE PINE TOLD BY A VISITING AUSTRALIAN, Some of tho terrible experiences a niaa can go through and come out alive and well were related by Private N. L. Crol'ts, of the Fourth Battalion, First Division of the Australian Expeditionary Force, who arrived here yesterday from Sydney by the Manuka. He was in the original landing at Gallipoli on April 25, and was nearly four months in the trenches without receiving a scratch. Then came the attack on' Lone Pine Ridge, when ho, 'as one of a company of 200, was ordered to charge through a hell of shrapnel and machine-gun. fire, and bomb tho Turks out of their fourth line of trenches. To do this tho attacking party had to jump over three lines of - -trenches, and their orders were to sandbag up the section of the trench they took as soon as possible to prevent the Turks roaching their fourth line from the intervening three, and so out them off. Sixty men won through, and duly bombed the Turks out of the fourth trench, but between 5 and 6 p.m. on tho day of the battle a Gholt smashed Pte. Croft6's left leg. Though he suffered great pain, he did not lose consciousness, but tried to drag himself back to the trench behind him. He crawled slowly back for twelve hours, fully exposed to the machine-gun fire that was tearing up the ground all round him. On one occasion he noticed a shell hole, which ho thought would give him a little shelter. He was about.to drag himself in, when a bayonet thrust was made at him, and just touched his' chest. The hole was already occupied by a Turk. Pte. Crofts looked round for some means of offence, and, amongst tho debris of battle, ho found a vide with the magazino fully loaded. Back he crawled to the hole, and discharged the whole/-of the ten rounds into it, though ho could not seo over the edge. Then he took a peer over, and found the Turk quite dead. Too weak to remove the body, he shared the shelter with his late enemy. When the Ridgo was taken, Pte. Crofts was found in the hole, and the rescuing party bound up his shattered leg over tho uniform tronsers ho was wearing, and there he lay in a trench for another six hours until the stretcher-bearers came along. Two jo'f them conveyed him half-way down the hill', and then turned back,, and two others continued on .with the wounded man. As they werif moving down a slope, a shell killed the foremost stretch-er-bearer, and tho man /behind' was severely wounded by shrapnel, and Crofts' leg received another pellet from a shrapnel shell. Even the barge 'that took him out to the hospital ship was under shell fire. Owing to tho number of severe cases on board, Private Crofts, whose limb was now numb and painless, declined to be "fixed up" whilst others were suffering more severely. This meant that he received no attention, at all for his leg until he arrived at the hospital in Malta. : Tho leg was amputated at once, well above the knee, and within a week tho I sufferer was feeling "pretty good," and, i as far as his general health is concerned, he has never looked back. Private Crofts, who was eight months in England, cannot say enough for the kind treatment ho received from everyone th'ete. It was almost worth the experience he had gone through at Gallipoli £o realise what "bricks" the British people were. When he was fitted with an artificial limb, he was given the freedom of the railroads, s and, no matter where ho went, ho was not allowed to pay for anything. In London, if ho wished to cross the street, a friendly policeman would hold the traffic up by a wave of his hand, and help him across with the words—"Come along, Anzac!" He happened to bo in Dublin during the recent riots, and was asked to shoulder a rifle before the authorities were aware that ho had lost a les, but lie sa'ys there were plenty of convalescent colonial soldiers there, who went to the assistance of tho Government authorities. _ Private Crofts leaves for Dumulin to-night on a visit to his relatives there.