JUST THE BRITISH WAY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 302, 10 September 1918, Page 8

JUST THE BRITISH WAY

HEROISM. ALL IN THE DAY'S WORK. ' • { (By Captain U. F. W. Kees.) j There is heroism ■ other than .that which finds its expression, in .the. fury of battle. It is a thousand times harder ] to be simply heroic .when one is not at giipswith the enemy, but lias, simply jto hang on, knowing but'imperfectly I what is happening, and awesomely j ignorant at what moment or in . what snape death may come. .There is. nothing spectacular about such heroism. Often it- passes unnoticed. It seldom wins the V.C. -But sometimes someone ( who matters hears of it. and' then it meets /with its due reward. . l am "going to tell a plain, lin varnished talc of ouo recorded instance of such heroism; , The man who is its subk'ot j had not the faintest idea that ho had ( done anything out of the ordinary. It was all in the day's work—and it ne\er occurred to him that any other course of action was possible. He was a- Brit- f ish signaller at company headquaitein in the front line. The company was a J thin one—perhaps only eighty or ninety trench rifles , all told-and the sector, i was ori&'in which the Boclie was unusually active, and mysterious, and. nobody ■knew where, the next blow would tall. Presently the. Uermans made afraid. It was rather a big aftan minutes' heavy bombardment, and then j a rush by' about two hundred of the enemy with a. barrage on the commum- I cation trenches to stop the British remforcenients from coining up. , y | iell a thing like that happens, eighty or ninetv trench rifles can stop a lot or Boches from coming on or ever going back, but they cannot stop a certain number from getting into the, trench All they can do—and they .gbnerallj manage it very successfully is to prevent a maximum ot those who get in from getting out again., Perhaps. fortj or fifty Germans got into the trench on this occasion. Bombing parties were organised, and boxed them. It is slou work, -bombing traverse after traverse, though not -unexciting. But it was di - ferent for the company signaller in his dug-out forty feet below. He did not } know whether the had got the upper hand or not, All he could heai ] was the pandemonium of yells * bursting bombs overhead. He did not know when a mobile charge might tumble down the dug-out steps and Ww him .beyond the bounds of even w lie less telegraphy. All his instinct must' , have been to snatch up his rifle, fa a ] into the trench, aud have a smack a . the enemy. That ■ incipientt damstio- , phobia which is inherited from cm forest forefathers gives us all a horror by, being caught like a rat in a trap. < ■ But one of die essential things in an ] affair of this sort is that battalion headquarters should be kept mformeel , of the course of events; and so that signaller stuck to his phone, telling as fcst he could, gather his own. reading of sound, by: casual shouts of passers-by, by messengers from the company commander—the narrative of the raid while it was m progress. \ou i must remember that every messe:ngcr who riished down the steps was to him a possible Boche. But hiti job wasjo send messages through to B.H.Q.—ana he kept on doing it. it never occurred to him to do anything else. • AVhen the show was over, and l e had . sent'through "trendies clear ot tie enemv," "no took the receiver off his . S, and strolled upstairs to nee what Wl hiiin<uicd.' As luck would ha\e it, while he was away the adjutant sent through a. call, and thero was n to take it. When he cams back he had only been away two minutes-he , vas asked for his name and. number. All night long lie had nigl/tmares of what .would; happen to him when l e was court-inartialled for leaving off his P °lt'is hardly necessary to say that his anticipations were very w:de of ■ t mark He got a strafing from .t ie CO, of course—but also, a fortnight l'<!vr he got the Military Medal—and he deserved'it. Yet that was raj-an evervdav ocourrence. fliat lelloA is still'in el'oubt about what he did to win the M.M. You see-I make no apology for repeating it-it, had never occurred to him. to do anything else. Just the British'way. _____