BATTLE STORIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1606, 5 September 1916, Page 4

BATTLE STORIES.

BOOK THAT SAVED A LIFE. TWO BULLETS JOINED INTO ONE. A vivid picture of the great assault on Montnuban is given by a sergeant; — “We went over in grand style, and found nothing much in the way until we got into Montauban,” he said. “Here the place was in an awful mess. Most of the houses had been knocked head over heels. As wo came on we saw lots of Germans running out of the back oi the village, but when we got into the streets there were plenty of them monkeying about the ruins. “We had divided the company up into groups of six, but as we neared the village we all joined up again. My five pals were five of the best, and we kept well 10-gcther. We saw some Huns in a ground-tloor room, so we dropped a Mills bond) through the window, and didn’t wait for an answer. ; “As we turned the corner we saw a Gerpian lying round the end of a wall.; He’d got a machine-gun and had made a little emplacement with bricks. He turned this d thing on me, and got me in the foot. It didn’t stop me, though, and when I was near him 1 felt two kicks over the heart. I didn’t wait to see what had happened, but simply went at him and bayoneted him. SAVED BY A “KNIGHT ON WHEELS.”

“I couldn’t go on much further, so I sat down to see what the damage was. My foot was pretty bad, hut when I looked at my left breast pocket I saw two hples in it. I opened my pocket and found that two bullets had gone through my metal shaving mirror, through my pocket-ease, and had nosed their way into a book I was carrying. Funnily; enough, earlier in the morning my officer gave me the bqok, and said I could read it when I got into tlie German trenches —so I put, it in my pocket, little thinking that I should be able to read a bit of it in hospital ship coming back. [The' two bullets, after piercing the mirror and the case, met and joined themselves together in one lump of metal. They carried strips of the metal into the case and bound the two firmly together. The book was “A Knight on Wheels,” by lan Hay.] \ “I saw three Germans come up to two of our fellows and throw down their rifles. So our lads chucked down theirs, too, and went for them with their fists, and they didn’t half give ’em a dusting. One of our boys did wonders with the bayonet. He was chasing three Germans. He caught them up and bayoneted two; as he swung round he hit the third man down with the butt of his rifle. . ' DYING MAN’S ORDERS..

“Captain R , leading his men, ■was hit by a bullet in the hand. He sat down to hind it up, but seeing a disposition on the part of some of the men to go to his aid, he cried, ‘Go on with it, boys! I’ll be with you ki a. minute.’ Then he calmly stepped back to a dressing station, had his bandage fixed, and in a very short time came doubling baek, urging on the men, till again he fell with another wound.

“So it proceeded, British pluck paying the price of progress all the way over the first German line and into the fire hurricane' that lay beyond. “I was going by the side of my corporal,” said a smooth-faced lad, “when he turned to me and said, ‘lf 1 go down, you take charge and lead straight ahead.’ No sooner had he said so than a bullet caught him square in the breast, and he fell into my arms, but his last gasp was, ‘Push on with it.’ We went on till we got towards the barbed wire. Then 1 fell, and I rolled into the nearest shell-hole right on top of two officers already * wounded and lying there.”

Right along the line the same grim tale was told. Not a man faltered.