Volunteer Items

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 127, 23 April 1892, Page 2

Volunteer Items

The Manchester Riflep will hold a capitation parade next Thursday. The following letter was published in the Wellington Post by a correspondent who had served in the Royal Fusiliers : — Sir — Reading your local in last evening's paper concerning the Magazine Rifle (Mark 2-303 bore), perhaps the following incident may be of interest to some of your military readers ; — While we were experimenting with Mark r-303 Magazine Rifle, at Hythe, in 1890, testing for long-range volleys, sighted at 2500 yards, on the flats towards Dymchurch redoubt, everyone was greatly surprised when the order suddenly came through the field telephone to cease firing, as two officers who were walking along the beach close to the redoubt, three miles away, narrowly escaped with their lives, and had to take to their heels, with the bullets whizzing about their ears. On subsequent examination the following day, Dymchurch redoubt was found to be literally riddled with bullets fired from this new rifle, from Hythe. A ricochet also broke through the door of a fisherman's hut, three miles and three-quarters distant. It is stated that Lieut. -Colonel Baillie, of Marlborough, one of the oldest and most popular Volunteer officers in the colony, and an Imperial veteran as well, is about to resign his commission. The commission of Captain Edward Cooper, of the Auckland Victoria Rifle Volunteers, has been cancelled for absence without leave.