A GALLANT SOLDIER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 148, 12 March 1918, Page 4

A GALLANT SOLDIER

: « LIEUT. E. A. PORRITT RECEIVES MILITARY CROSS. Official advice has now been received of the grant of the Military Cross to Lieutenant E. A. Porritt for gallantry in the field on October 4 last at Gravenstafel. He was then acting as adjutant of the 2nd Auckland Battalion. Early in the attack on that date the second in command of the battalion was killed, two of the company commanders killed, and the other two wounded. The commanding officer had his ankle shattered by an 18-pounder shell, and handed over the command of the battalion to Lieutenant Porritt, who commanded it for the rest of the day. The ground over which the troops had to advance was very wet, and pitted with concrete dug-outs filled with German machine-gunners. The going wa3 difficult, but the men behaved splendidly, and under the command of Lieu-' tenant Porritt tho battalion reached its objective, and with only one junior officer left to each company hung on to its position and successfully repelled three counter-attacks. Only five ofhcers of the battalion were unwounded, but tho ii.c.o.'s stepped into the duties of the officers who went down, and they pulled the battalion through, a number of the n.c.o.'s earning the award or the Military Medal and a few gamine the coveted Distinguished Conduct Medal. Lieutenant Porritt is a son of Colonel E. W. Porritt, of Paeroa, and a grandson of tho Rev. T. Porritt, o Seatoun, who has always token a keen interest in military matters and who has another grandson at the front, a son on a hosoital ship, and .a son in camp with the-Thirty-sixth Reinforcements.