Kitchener's Bullet.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 7 August 1914, Page 8

Kitchener's Bullet.

Lord Kitchener, one of the most distinguished of the Knights of the I'alli who recently were installed at iienry VII. "s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, once had as narrow an t-sciipo of his lii'o as ever befell a soldi;']-. It was in the course of the j.rnlonged and fiercely-fought ca-m----p;iign in the Soudan in the 'eighties, in the first year of that decade, in fact.

There was a, lively skirmish going on at a place named Handoub, just outside Snaking when Kitchener, who was then a rising young oJlicer of Engineers, was shot at by one of the ]\lahdi's negro soldiers. The bullet found its mark in .the side of Kitchener's face at the back of the cheek. It was a llemington bullet, and inflicted a really dreadful wound, breaking the bone at the base of the jaw. It took a long time to get the splinters of bone out, and the doctors were unable to operate, as the bullet and fragments of bone were too close to the jugular vein. The ball could not be located, and the doctors pronounced his case as hopeless. They said

the patient could not live and his , sister, accordingly, was sent for ; from Kngland. | The future Saviour of the Soudan, | however, differed from the surgeons, | and steadily refused to believe in their gloomy prognosis of his case, and, though he had to endure a journey down the Nile to the hospital at Cairo, confined in a small cabin in sweltering heat, his thin, . muscular physique ami iron willpower kept the dreaded fever at ; bay. The hospital doctors also failied to find the bullet, and came to : the conclusion that it had worked | its way out during the voyage \ down the Nile. Kitchener himself was of the opinion that the bullet . had, by some means, come out, un- '. noticed by the surgeons or himself, ,- and gradually the terrible wound healed, and Kitchener returned to i duty. ! A year or so after the skirmish :at Handoub, Kitchener one day sat ; down to <\ine off a beef-steak which had been served up by Sergeant Hilton, of the hospital staff... Sud- ; denly Kitchener clapped his hand :to his jaw. "Milton," he said, "was there a bone in that steak ?" "N;o, sir," replied the sergeant. "Then that bullet was in my jaw j after.all," : said Kitchener, "and I've swallowed it, for I felt it go down !" That proved to be the case, and the great soldier preserves the flattened piece of lead on his keychain.