ABOARD THE HOSPITAL SHIP MAHENO.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1485, 14 December 1915, Page 3

ABOARD THE HOSPITAL SHIP MAHENO.

INTERESTING NARRATIVE BY FATHER SEGRIEF.

We are privileged to reproduce portions of a most interesting letter written by the Rev Father Segrief, of Wellington, one of the chaplains aboard the hospital ship Mabeno, written from Anzac Bay, Gallipoli, under date September 24th : (Continued from our last issue.) With such a crowd arriving together, there was work enough for all to do. My first job was cutting the clothes off a poor chap who was hit in both thighs, he was in great pain and had to be handled gently ; it was all right till it came to getting his boots and socks off. The poor chap told me they had not been off lor 28 days. As I cut on, I was quite sure he was telling the truth ! He was 0 lawyer and the agony he had suffered from dirt and uucleauliuess was, he said, a greater agony than his wounds. That is one of the side lights of active service which folk at home cannot realise. After sponging and feeding him, I was called on to help dress the wounds of a Maori boy. He was shockingly torn by a shell, from his spine to his shoulder was a gaping rent ; we could see the bones working iu the shoulder blade, yet he was laughing and joking and jerking his shoulder and arm for our amusement, while we watched the joint working. He was a perfect brick and treated it all as a great joke, and when the various lotions were put on to cleanse the wound, he was comparing the process to shell fire, next to bombs, but when the iodine got on, he said it was machine guns—the worst of all their troubles. While that fust big batch was being treated and attended the battle raged as fierce as ever. During the atternoon we had watched the gnus exploding shells about the trenches aud on the beach, and on the whole we found it a very interesting and fascinating occupation. But with the effects ot explosions aud rifle fire so clearly shown on the poor fellows in the wards, the noise of the belching guns was positively heart sickening. We were trying to repair the damage done, while the guns of all sizes kept up a constant roar all night. The shore guns were loud enough, but the guns of the ships quite close to us almost deafened one with their crash, aud shook the place with the concussion of their discharge “And all night long the noise of battle rolled amid the mountains by the summer sea.” Scarcely was one boat load shipped, washed and attended to before another barge would sidle along with another crowd of battered wrecks. The night simply fled past and dawn was on us before anyone realised it. The wounded were coming in such streams and there was much to be done that all found work enough. On the Saturday evening we left the beach at Anzac for Mudros Bay in Lemnos Island, with over 460 cases on board. The run over to Mudros was a. short one —some 45 miles — but during it we had our first burials. Our first load yielded 23 deaths, but that fortunately was the highest number we have had, and subsequent loads have yielded a much smaller crop. We arrived at Mudros on Sunday morning and began to unload our people on to a “hospital carrier”—one of a number of large ships which bring out troops and take home wounded, but because they handle troops too. they are denied the security granted to “white ships,” aud are not allowed to go up to the firing line. We discharged our load on to this boat, the Derflinger, a German prize ship, and began at once to clean up our boat. It was a great job. The decks had been covered with mattresses and used for the slighter cases, these outfits had to be sprayed, the decks swabbed down, the wards disinfected and everything made shipshape again. That night at dusk we cleared out for Anzac again. As the harbour entrance is boomed over at night ships cannot work Mudros alter sundown. At dawn we were anchored again within sight and sound of the shell-swept beach.' Many visitors from the New Zealand lines came off to see the ship, and it was a treat to see them appreciate clean surroundings alter the squalor in which they live. They brought us over many thing as curios,, dead shells etc., which had discharged their contents about their dug-outs, many of them to the cost of the occupants. Things on shore are the roughest possible, the men living in shelters which they dig out ot the sandstone cliffs and hills. These must not be too deep into the bill, otherwise the owners would be hopelessly buried if a shell struck the place. As it is we get many aboard who have been buried for hours before they can be aided, for during an engagement to show up at all is to draw a deadly fire on all about. This is what happened Father Dore. It there is one name which is universally loved and honoured among the troops at Anzac it is Father Dore. I have heard his praises sounded by such numbers, and that of all creeds and classes, that there can not be the slightest doubt that he was a giant among a race of heroes. Not only has be been the Priest among the men, he has been mates with each one cheering them right up in the front trenches, and over the parapet with them in their charges. Attending wounded under fire was his chief recreation and stretcher bearing a daily occupation. The day he was hit he was out in the spur attending to the wounded, despite a terrific machine gun and shrapnel fire. (Continued in our next issue.)