THE NAMELESS DEAD.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 144, 11 February 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NAMELESS DEAD.

MEN "POSTED AS MISSING." THE FATEFUL ROLL-CALL. HEROES OF GALLIPOLI. In writing of the Australian soldiers who have been reported as "missing" at the Dardanelles, the correspondent of the Melbourne Age says:— "I know no keener anguish than to have a friend posted as missing on the battlefield. He joins the ranks of the nameless heroes who have laid down their lives in great charges, whose bodies are swallowed in the waves, or lie untouched on a shellswept hill or plain. Yet every charge for us or the enemy must mean that, at the first, the list of missing will be long, though careful inquiry always results in many names being restored to the effective fighting roll even, or heroes will be found wounded iu hospital or captive in the enemy's hands. Valour in such cases remains silent, though the mighty work goes recorded; each hero's name is included in the scroll of fame that surrounds the deeds of fame that surrounds the deeds of battalions and armies.

" Only an armistice can help to clear up doubts about the missing, and it is seldom that such are arranged in modern war. Then the burial parties can find the identity discs and papers that will establish the fact that so many brave comrades feared and wondered at. Those who cahnot picture a battlefield may wonder at this. To them I would say look at the pictures that have been published of the demolition of the enemy trenches by the guns, and the buried, broken men, lying there : n. Imagine, in the fluctuating flood of battle, when the enemy is hurling line after line of men to recapture those trenches, trying to identify those men who gained the victory first, and whose comrades now are striving to maintain their ga'n. "I have seen trenches where the padres can but read the burial cervices over the sacred ground where our lads have fallen midst their enemies, dying hard. None may have seen those men fall, though still it is in this way that many cases are established, when, shoulder to shoulder, men have advanced, pal beside pal, and he who survives can afterwards relate—yes, even when the battle rages loudesthow his mate was killed. So another name is removed from the fateful list of missing. WORK OF CALLING THE ROLL. "Were it possible to always knowexactly what men left the trenches in a charge, or in a landing, made the charge on a beach, or leapt into a stream and stormed the opposing bank, then to reconcile the roll later would be less difficult than it is. What happens is this. Men may take part in a charge or counter-attack, hastily arranged, and their exact names may not be left on record. How can their names be recorded in this action or that? They must in_ due course be posted as missing. 'lt wi'ii only be chance if their death is revealed. "To the c&mmanding officer, first of the companies, and then of the battalions and regiments, falls the task of forwarding the names to his immediate superior officer of the casualties and missing, as far as he knows them. These gradually drift down through various channels with —in the case of GalLpoli, owing to the distance of the base away —hesitating slowness to the records office in Cairo. Here already, maybe, have been received the lists of wounded. Those lists are checked with the lists given by the regimental doctor who has treated some of the men, and by the lists, too, of the clearing station on the beach, through which every man should go, and does go, except in an isolated case or two, who go straight to the boats. But their names are recorded on the hospital ship lists or in the base hospitals. FEW PRISONERS OF WAR. " Later, much later, there drift in from behind the enemy's lines, the prisoners of war. They are very few. The list even now is but a few score — Australians will not be made prisoners; their disregard of death gives no thought of surrender. Only an ambush can account for those now in the hands of the Turks. So the men who live are slowly taken from the lists of missing, and those lists sent back again, much reduced, to the men in the firing-line, when often it happens that men they believed dead are discovered lying wounded in hospital. Per. haps a letter to a comrade will establish that fact much quicker even than official procedure permit*, and is possible.

"Lastly comes the work of the commanding officers to gather round them a board, which collects all the available evidence about the men who have not been accounted for. Here it is wnere personal statements are taken, and reluctantly the fact is borne in on tne minds of nil that another hero must ' added to the list of killed. 'He that incrcaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. ESTABLISHING FACTS. "I wonder how often have devoted parties of infantry and sappers dug out small trenches and saps towards a group of fallen heroes in order to reach and bury them with military honours, and stretcher-bearers risked their lives in bringing in under cover of darkness men from a bullet-swept area from no man's and dead men's ground. Sometimes wounded have crawled back, as

did one man from under the very parapet of the Turkish trenches on the Nek, one of the few surviving Light Horse men of the heroic Eighth who reached the Turkish lines and returned. He, as others have done before h:m; has brought back the news of fallen comrades, and established beyond doubt the circumstances of their death. Their names are removed from the list of missing. It is the Court that collates such evidence. Those men who lie on the field of battle close enough to the parapet of the trenches can be seen and recognised, though often their doom is to lie there in sight of their comrades, their rifies by their sides, until, as dust to dust, their bodies crumble away, and only the bloodstained, tattered, faded remnants of the bullet-pierced uniform, pnttees and crumpled boots, remain in the outline of a human form. They are the honoured dead, killed in a charge, who must form the great majority of the officially missing.

BOARD'S DIFFICULT TASK. "It must be seen what the task of the board is. Picture these officers in a small dug-out, carefully examining lists, leaving no page unturned; no evidence, however slight, unsifted, untested : no man unquestioned who will help them to discover the truth of a fallen comrade's death. "It is only after the most careful investigation that names are removed from the list of missing. But the facts must be squarely faced, and I know it is a very few per cent, indeed of those on the missing lets who can be traced to hospitals or to the enemy's prisoners of war camp: the great majority must have their names inscribed on the roll of honour of Australia —they are nameless dead upon the battlefield. There is a tear for all who die, A mourner o'er the humblest Yetgrave; But nations swell the funeral cry, And triumph weeps above the brave."

THE BISHOP'S HAT. One of the best stories about Lord Roseberv, tells of an occasion when he entered "a shop in Piccadilly to buy himself a hat. While he was standing w : th his head bare;', waiting to be fitted, a well-known bishop, who suffers from short-sghtedness, came in, and, mistaking the earl for the shopman, approached him. " Have you got a hat like this!'" he asked, taking off his own rather archaic head-gear, and Inndi.ig it for inspection. Lord Roseberv, with his hands n ) is pockets, looked it over curiously and remarked, "No. my lord, I haven't a hat like that. And what's more, if I had I'm blest if I'd wear if" What we make of ourse'ves depends upon the ideals which we habitually hold. Our lives are shaped upon our mental models.