LETTER FROM THE FRONT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1492, 4 January 1916, Page 3

LETTER FROM THE FRONT.

By the Egyptian mall that came to hand yesterday, Mr and Mrs Kent-Johnston received word that their son, Sapper W. Keut-John-ston of the Divisional Signal Company, had, just prior to the withdrawal from Gallipoli, been invalided to Point-de-Koublek Hospital, Cairo, with influenza, somewhere about the 20th of November, but as his parents bad a cable on December 19th from their son, in which he stated his health was splendid, there is every hope that be is quite fit again long ere this. Sapper Kent-Johnston wrote as under to his parents : “En route Egypt, Hospital Ship Syria, day and date unknown, but about 20/11/15. After getting back from Lemnos, a big dose of reinforcements arrived, and the “old hands,” now much reduced, got a very easy time ■ :>■-intending. All went well 1.,. uoout a fortnight, when T was sent in charge of five men to the 4th Brigade. I left all ray things with Viv., intending to get them when finally straightened at Zad, our new station. We had only been there a few days when the doctor packed me off to the ambulance. After two days there, they sent me away to the Hospital Ship, but owing to the weather it was four days before they could take us off. We stayed about 24 hours at Lemnos, and I was dead scared ; I was one of the ones to be put ashore there. I missed it, and we are now bowling along merrily for Alexandria. Of course, I do not know whether they will keep me there or send me to Cairo, I’m practically O.K. now, except for weakness and loss of appetite. Influenza, they marked me down. On the day I went into field hospital, an S’2 shell landed in Viv. and my dugout. It killed four men —blew them to atoms, and most of our gear went, too, Viv. was out at the time, thank goodness : but it got a youngster named Ashton in our company. Viv, has taken a photo, of the dug-out with the daylight where the shell came through.” The first intimation received by Mr and Mrs Kent-Johnston that their son had been in hospital was a letter received yesterday forenoon from a lady friend in Egypt, and who. while wiiting to his parents, received word over the telephone from the Point deKoublek Hospital, saying that Sapper Kent-Johnston had arrived there from Gallipoli. The above is only another of the many cases that have occurred where boys have gone into hospital and their relatives have received no official advice.