"JUST HELL!"

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2948, 7 December 1916, Page 5

"JUST HELL!"

WELLINGTON TRAM MAN'S STORY OP FLERS. Writing to Mr. Bowes, conductor of tho Wellington Trajnways Band, LanceCorporal L. Hansen, who was in the tramway, service here, and a. member of tho band, writes from No. 2 General N.Z. Hospital, .Walton-on-Thames, as follows:— \ ' 'Just a few lines to let you know that lam still in tho land of the living. I am surprised at it myself. I got a bit of a wound at Somme,' though I hopo to be "soon out of tho Hospital. It was only a couple of machine-gun bullets through my right foot. I am glad it wasn't worse, as the two chaps next to mo were killed outright. It happened as we were taking over a trench just past Mers, a village you might have heard of-in the papers. We were coming round a bend in tho road, and didn't expcct anything to happen, as wo wero pretty quiet, when suddenly a machinegun opened on ..us only about 30 or 40 yards away. The Germans must have got up.in tho dark. I saw two of the chaps next ino fall, and tried to hold one of them up, but ho was dead. So I crawled along behind a wall, feeling as though I had been hit by a stone. I did not take particular notice until I got under cover, and then felt the holes in my boots and the blood, so I got up to tho dressing station. That was on September 15, the first day the New Zealanders were in action on tho Sommo front. The shells were dropping everywhere, and it is a wonder to me that I got through it alive. There was hardly a foot of ground that wasn't torn to pieces with the shells, and there were dead Gormans lying about everywhere. So I am glad to bo out for a bit, aud have had a pretty good time here, and hope to go up to London one of these days." Corporal Hanson sends his regards to the band and congratulates them on the idea of making it a military band—now an accomplished fact.