The Merry Despatch Rider

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 5 February 1915, Page 3

The Merry Despatch Rider

The following is from an officer in the Royal Field Artillery to his father :

We have now entered upon the “uncomfortable” weather. Big gales from the sea and drifting, icy rain. The roads are simply impossibe, and driving a car is a “ great adventure.” As for the despatch riders, it is a continual mystery how they get through their work. When the history of the war comes to be written there will, or should he, a volume devoted to them alone. If any of our young men at home want to taste the sweets of real adventure, that is the branch to join.

And of all the troops, none are so cheery. One came to me the other night from headquarters, and I had half an hour’s yarn with him. Or, rather, he did a'll the talking. A decription of a night in , a big town near by. whither he had gone on a message to another headquarters. He of hi:’ adventures and the appalling dangers as though they were the funniest jokes he had ever heard. He was in fits of laughter all the time. The town was burning fiercely; shells were pouring in. “ I actually had to pull up,” he said, “at one place because a shell came by, took out the whole front of a house, leaving floors and furniture intact, passed through, and smashed up the house opposite.” (Roars of laugher.” “Of course headquarters had been shelled out long since; an operator and three clerks were killed, and as all the streets seemed to have vanish it was rather a job to find the way about, A . shell plumbed down and burst about 100 yards in frontpf me, and a minute or so afterwards out of the smoke and dust >a chum a mine appeared wheeling his bike. It appears he had had a puncture. (Roars of laughter.)” I listened in amazement. How can an enemy contend against a spirit such as that ?