The Sergeant Major's First Boche.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 27 September 1917, Page 1

The Sergeant Major's First Boche.

$ A MELODRAMA OF REAL LIFE. In the distant, easy-going pre-war days we used rather to poke fun at some of the writers for what was called the long arm of coincidence to lit the exigencies of their plots. The idea is perhaps one of the many we shall have to revise in the light of the war. For the most extravagant among the users ol' the long arm rarely ventured upon any stretching of it that would equal Fate's almost daily exercise of it in this war, says Mr E. J. Dawson in his "Sommc Battle Stories."

The sergeant-major of A company was recognised as a man of parts. He had once shared a moderately substantial business with a partner, something to do with a certain kind of clothing, housed in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's Churchyard, wholesale and apparently prosperous. But there had come a day of disaster. The sergeant-maj-or's partner had disappeared, and the books uud accounts, which had been his special charge, disclosed quite a long series of systematic frauds, the upshot of which left the sergeant-ma-jor picked pretty bare by the time he had honourably settled up with all creditors. When the war came it found him employed in the counting house of another firm with which he had previously had dealings as a fellow wholesaler. With a wife, an invalid sister, and three children dependent upon him, he had not been able to satisfy himself in tne quite early days of the war that ho had the right to enlist, though he was an old volunteer and an ex-terri-torial. However, the early spring of 1915 saw him an enlisted man. He was a platoon sergeant within a couple or three months before his unit reached France. There was not a better managed company among all those that left Salisbury Plain, and the sergeant-major had a good deal to do with the admirably efficient running of it. He was liked and respected by every one who knew him; but —"C-m you see the sergeantmajor holding his end up in a scrap?" asked the junior sub of the company, in a t.ent on the hill outside Boulogne, during their first, night in France. And his brother officers nodded thoughtfully. "You'll find he'll do his job," opined the O.C. oracularly. And again the others nodded.

WAITING TO GET INTO ACTION. During those early months in France ho often used a rifle in the trenches, was occasionally out on patrol, and more than once fired a drum or two from a machine gun. The O.C. found him very helpful in the discussion and arrangement of minor strafes, and the | severest critic would never have found g a hint of inclination to shirk in the | sergeant-major. As the O.C. said, ho | was always "on deck," and never for- jjj got anything. But at the end of four | months he never had laid hands upon a (j Boche, or even seen one, save as one | does catch fleeting glimpses of men in | trenches a couple of hundred yards |

away. | And then there came the first daylight raid in that bit of line. It was j a Bocho raid, and it came at the end of ; an hour's very hot bombardment on an extremely narrow section of our front. It really did not touch the section of the sergeant-major's own company, but it happened that he was on the extreme left flank of his company line when a j handful of Bodies rushed a machinegun emplacement of the next company. The air was full of tear-shell gas and ' smoke, and the confusion was tromon- ( dous.

Some men of the next company were on the parapet, and something made the sergeant-major climb out, too. It was then that he had his first close look at Boches. Two of tlicm had collarcd the; next company's Lewis gun from that emplacement; big, beefy looking Bavarians they were, one in a helmet and the other wearing a cap. The sergeant-; major had ceased to think some time, before this, during the heat of the bombardment. Now, as though he were listening to some other fellow a long way off, he heard himself yell with singular ferocity, and felt himself leaping for-, ward at those two Boches, his bayonet held low.

MEETING AN OLD ACQUAINT ANCE.

The one with the cap let all go and bolted into the greenish smoke, but the 1 fellow in the helmet swung around at | bay with a revolver which he fired just as tlie sergeant-major jumped upon him, yelling like a South Sea Island warrior. The Boche grunted as the steel found his vitals, and his body pitched forward, almost dragging his rifle from the sergeant-major's hands. As it pitched forward, the helmet rolled dear of the man's head, and showed the ser-geant-major a queer, irregular shaped mark, a "port wine stain," the ser-geant-major called it, behind and below the German's ear. He was still alive when the S.M. bent over him to look into Ids face, and the eyes of the two met in a queer, flickering glance, all curiosity on the side of the Englishman, and vindictive hate on the side of the German, who, by the way, was an unter-offizer. With that look of liatrco in his eyes he died, having clearly recognised* the man who killed him. The first Boche seen in the war by the sergeant-major was his absconding partner, who had robbed him and ruined his business in London, and this little coincidence materially helped the S.M. in the solution of the problem ho used to set himself as to how he would behave when he came to be really "up against it."