JOTTINGS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 14, 18 January 1915, Page 5

JOTTINGS.

A party of Stratford men will be leaving for the Trentham camp during the second week in February. A meeting at Timaru endorsed the resolutions passed by the Dunedin doctors that the State should bear all the expense of the forces.

The general committee of the British and Belgian Fund met on Saturday and determined to make further efforts to raise money to assist the distressed Belgians. So far £6500 has been sent forward by this committee and there is some £BOO in hand. Fresh subscriptions were started in the room, and headed by £3O from the Atlas Mill Co., £2OB was reached in a few minutes. THE FIRST INDIAN V.C. Havildar Gngna Singh, 6’7th Wilde’s Rifles, is the first Indian to bo recommended for the V.C. He arrived in the hospital ship on November 24 (reports a correspondent at the front), a bundle of splints and bandages, but very cheerful and full of heart. He lias five bullet wounds—one in the leg, one in the chest, one in each hand, and one, on the scalp from a revolver shot fired point blank. Here is his account of the action in which he was wounded.

The havildar and 15 men of his regiment were attacked in their trench before dawn. The enemy were stopped for some seconds by the barbed wire entanglements, and lost heavily before they broke through. In the hand-to-hand struggle that ensued the havildar shot the German officer, whose bullet grazed his head. He took his sword from him and killed 10 more before he was brought down by thq bullet in his foot. “Otherwise,” he said, “I should have killed more, ft was a heavy sword.” The enemy (lost 00. He was left for dead, the sole survivor of his party.

Gagna Singh is a Dogra from Tikka, a small village in the Kangra district. His regiment was at Firozpur. The news of the gallantry will jbe received with very great satisfaction in India. This is the first war in which it has ‘been possible for an Indian to win the Victoria Cross. Eligibility to the distinction was one of the boons granted by the KingEmperor to his Indian subjects at the Delhi Durbar of 1912.