SERGEANT HEANEY, HERO.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 24, 26 March 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

SERGEANT HEANEY, HERO.

FOOD FOR THE FIRING LINE,

The entire fabric of this vast war is set with a jewellery of splendid deeds. This war has brought into the glowing light of events battalionb and regiments and brigades of heroes. Every fighting line is quick with valiant acts, every country can boast of immortal courage of its sons.

In this panoply of valour it is far from easy to choose one instance and say: "This is the most superb!" All are the most superb. Yet there are cases that move one by their sheer coolness and calm courage to admiration that is unstinted; and just such, a case is that of Sergeant Heaney, of the King's Own (says "Great Deeds of the Great War'').

Sergeant Heaney had been in the firing line since the first shot of the war was loosed. He was a capable and clever soldier, loved by those under him. thoughtful for their needs and their trials—he was "one of the best." In the bitter, battling line that has wrung the country about the beautiful old town of Armentieres with the pangs of war he served his country more than well. Sergeant Heaney's regiment and other regiments, as Mr. John Prioleau states in the "Daily Mail," were holding an advance line against the endless ranks of attack pushed forward by th • Germans. They were subjected to a ceaseless and prodigious artillery fire, and this artillery fire not only frayed their trenches with slaughter, but turned the area behind the trenches, and between the regiments and the British camp, into a zone of detonating destruction, across which it was death for any man to go.

The regiments were isolated. They did not mind this is in the beginning because they were holding the.enemy at bay; bub presently they began to mind it. They began to understand that they were cut off from the camp, cut off from supplies—they began to starve. The men began, to look behind them across the shell-lorn tract that stretched between them and the camp; they began to wonder when the Army Service waggons, with the relief of fresh food, would pass out to them. But the waggons did not come. The Germans were systematically bombarding the roads, and under the torrent of shells the tracks were impassable. The regiments began to grow anxious. Germany they could hold, but hunger seemed about to defeat them. The situation was desperate. It was now that Sergeant Heaney found his chance to act. He had thought the matter out, he had looked at. the shell-shattered roads, knew the awful dangers of that slaughter-zone across which all help must pass. He had weighed up the chances of life and death carefully. He looked the risk in the face, and chose it. He went to the major of the Army Service Corps, and offered to venture across the zone of death and bring back food. "Sheer madness!" declared the major; but Sergeant Heaney did not waver. He collected his waggons, he collected his drivers and his men, and went.

THE CRAWLING CONVOY. It was four miles from the line of famished men to the camp. Each mile of the four was scorched and raked by the beating thresh of shell, each yard was a chance of death. But Heaney and his men went across those miles. His dipping waggons, his crawling convoy, went lurching at snail-pace over the shell-pocked roads, crept slowly, with an almost painful slowness, through the open gaps of the flat country where shell fire danced a wild macabre of slaughter. The avid gunners behind the German position picked out the dingy worm of the slow convoy, began to pay it particular attention. The air about the carts began to throb with the explosions of numberless projectiles, the men and horses moved forward in a temperature frigid with death. But it did move on. Slowly, with infinite labour over that torture of miles, the convoy went. It travelled half the way, a man was hit, a horse or two fell, tying the whole train into a tangle of confusion. The confusion was disentangled. The convoy crept on. THE RETURN JOURNEY.

After an eternity the camp was reached, the waggons were loaded up, fresh horses were put into the traces, everything was made ready. Again, crawling forward at a trivial speed, they laboured across the torment of fire-swept ground. They did not fal. ter; stimulated, inspired, by the calm devotion of the sergeant, they suffered all the terrors calmly, did their work steadily in the face of that feverish effort to slay them all. They did their work cleverly too. They made every use of cover, took every advantage that the countryside afforded. Sergeant Heaney was not only a brave man, he was a skilled and capable soldier. They got through. Where they should have been torn to pieces by that devastating fire of concentrated artillery, they won through. They brought the saving loads of food, not only to their own regiment, but. to every man in the division. Without the pomp of valour, without the hot. fierce ardours that give men supreme courage in fighting, they had saved the advance line, and in sa'vine; that they had saved the situation; it was a stirring, soldierly, workmanlike feat, performed in cold blood in the face not of one death, but of a thousand deaths waiting over thousands of yards. It was the real courage of steadiness, coolness, and endurance under an abnormal strain.

It was the unperturbed valour of one man that brought about that, groat, calm act, and made it is success. Quietly, without demonstration, Sergeant Heaney. of the King's Own, had done the work he had set himself to do. Quietly and without demonstration he went his way after the act was done. Tie was recommended for the Distinguished Conduct medal, and promoted lieutenant, and he went about his business as before, quiet, orderly, efficient in his task. And then he died. Two days later, near Warnoton, he was struck down, killed as a soldier is killed, in line with his men. His brave life went out as quietly as he had lived, as he had done his brave deeds. Out he is not dead, and his deeds are still living. In the hearts of his fellow soldiers his gallant spirit is still enshrined in a niche of devotion. They mourn him deeply, hut they know his glory, and it burns within their hearts. "Flo was one of the best," the men of the King's Own say. One of the best and bravest and noblest; that 1b the only tribute a soldier needs.