WISH COMES TRUE

Hokitika Guardian, 28 May 1930, Page 6

WISH COMES TRUE

INCIDENT 'OF GREAT WAR.

NEW ZEALAND FILLS BREACH

An unstudied but splendid tribute to the New Zealand Division crops up in a book just published, “Everyman at War.” The book comprises a collection of 60 accounts of personal experiences in the Great War. It is is one of these entitled “Retreat” that the relevant passage occurs—not only relevant but thrilling to any New Zealander who is proud of his country and not “too proud to fight” for it. •

The story is told by Private R- G. 'Bulitude, a ranker in tli© Artists’ Rifles, He tells how his battalion, and in fact, the whole fourteen divisions of General Gough’s Fifth Army, had ibeen overwhelmed on March 21, 1918, by the might of the German military machine; and bow, although they turned at bay time and again in the days that followed, they were bombarded or gassed or machine-gunned out of positipn after position from St. Quentin to In the end the shattered Artists’ Rifles were lying out before Albert, half-starved, demoralised and utterly weary. As it is set down in the book, is was then in desperation that Private Bultitude wished his big wish as follows: —

“Send up immediately large reinforcements of fresh troops —not ragged scarecrows like ourselves, mind, but real live soldiers, and let them

be colonials. “No magic button was needed. Up they came, rank after rank, cleanshaved, in spick and span uniforms, properly armed. The awed exclamation of one of my shell-hole companions seemed to sum up our ieelings to a nicety: “ ‘New Zealanders! ’ Well, Gawd help Jerry.” That, by the way, is a story which this Dominion knows very little, how the New Zealand Division closed the- breach in the British line And stopped the Germans breaking through to the sea.