A GREAT SOLDIER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 158, 24 September 1927, Page 12

A GREAT SOLDIER

HONOURED BY LONDON FUNERAL OF GENERAL DYER London paid homage to Briga-dier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, who, in 1919, by his determined action at Amritsar, saved the Punjab from rebellion and India from a .rising which might have rivalled the mutiny. TTIS reward for this great service was to be broken —the victim of political expediency. General Dyer was broken in health as well as in career, and finally he succumbed to the illness he fought so - long and so gallantly. “With deep and grateful thanks from one of the many hundreds of British women who owe their lives to this brave soldier in the riots of the Punjab, 1919.” This brief message, with a wreath of white lilies, was one of many such expressions of gratitude from British India to the late general at the funeral service at St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. There were also personal remembrances of some who had shared General Dyer’s responsibility and anxiety during those troubled months which preceded the action that cost him his career, and which led, after years of sorrow, to his death. The funeral, procession passed from the gates of Wellington Barracks on its way to St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. The coffin lay on a gun-carriage, covered with the Union Jack which had flown wherever General Dyer’s headquarters lay, during the last few years of his service on the Indian frontier. With it were his sword and orders. Beside the gun-carriage walked the bearer party, eight men of .the Irish Guards, and behind in three cars, came the principal mourners, Mrs. Dyer, widow of General Dyer, his son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Dyer, Dr. Gouglas Dyer, Miss Djrer, Mrs. E. P. Ommanney and his brother-in-law. Colonel Richards. Last of all came a detachment of ex-service-men of the 25th Battalion of the London Regiment. The steps of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields were thronged with people who stood with bowed heads when the coffin covered with a beautiful wreath of red carnations, disappeared into the church. The service was conducted by Dr. L. H. Gwynne, Bishop of Egypt and the Soudan. The congregation sang “Lead Kindly Light,” and the “Last Post’* and “Reveille” were sounded. After the service the body was taken to Golder’s Green for cremation. The wreaths, piled high # on two motor-cars, went to the Cenotaph.