MERRY DESPATCH RIDER.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 160, 11 March 1915, Page 3

MERRY DESPATCH RIDER.

PLACES HE WANTS. (BLOWN AWAY. The following is from an officer in the Royal Field Artillery to his father: We have now entered upon the "uncomfortable" weather. Big gale from the sea and drifting, icy rain. The roads are simply impossible, and driving a car is a "great adventure." As for the dispatch riders, it is a continual mystery hew they g'at through their work. Wihen the history of the war comes to be written there will, or should be, a volume devoted to th'em alone. If any of our younfg men at home want to taste the sweets ofr'aa! ad7.Mture. that i? the branch to join. Awl of all tb • troops, none are so c'.i3eiv One iame \r}. to me the other night from headquarters, and I had half an hour's yarn with him. Or, rather, he did all the talking. A description of v. night in , a big town near by, whither ha had gone on a message to another headquarters. He spoke of hi", adventure* and the appalling dangers as thci.gh they were the funniest joke? he had ever heard. He was in fits of laughter all the time. The town was burning fiercely, shells were pouring in. "I actually had to pull up," he said, "at one place because a shell came by, took out the whole front cf ahouse l'savving floors and furniture intact, passed through and smashed up the house opposite." (Roars of laughter.) "Of course, headquarters had been shelled out 10n, ! 3 since; an operator and three clerks wei"e killed, and as all the streets seemed to have vanished it was rather a job to find the way about. A shell plumped down and burst about 100 yards in front of me, and a minute or so afterwards Cut of the smoke and dust a chum of mine appeared wheeling his bike. It appears he had had a puncture." (Roars of laughter.) I listened in amazement. Hew can an enemy contend against a spirit such as that?