THE LOST LEGION.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 60, 10 March 1916, Page 8

THE LOST LEGION.

A GALLIPOLI MYSTERY. LONDON, January 14. In Sir lan Hamilton’s Dardanelles report there occurs this passage:— “■ . , . part of a fine company enlisted from the King’s Sandringham Estates. Nothing more was ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. Not one of them ever . came back.” The King to-day is mourning the strange fate of a score of men who were “King’s men” in a double sense. They are Captain Frank Beck, who has for 20 years looked after His Majesty’s Sandringhaih Estate, and 19 men who formed part of a company of 100 recruited from the employees bn the estate—men mostly bornto parents in the service of Dersingham, Hitch am, and Anmer, and who were themselves employed by Hi s Majesty. This company formed a portion of the Ist Battalion of the sth Norfplks. Their fate, with that of their colonel, Sir H. Proctor Beauchamp, 15 officers, and 238 ether men, ferms what will probably rank as one of the most amazing mysteries of the war. Sir lan Hamilton tells how, on the evening of August 13, they charged the enemy’s position at Anafarta. They passed through the village and on into the fores beyond, “pushing on, driving the enemy before them. The rest is silence. The total number of those in this gallant attack was ®l7 officers and 250 men. Of these one officer, Captain Coxon, who was one of the foremost in the attack, and 1.2 men are now known to be wounded and prisoners of war with the Turks. Nothing has been heard' of the remainder. The forest into which they charged rvas scoured through and through the following day, but net one man, dead or aliA : e, of this band of heroes was found. There have been Report p of (certain (belongings having been picked up, but nothing has been verified, and though the King has caused use to be made of every possible diplomatic channel in the hope of getting some neAvs of the missing men, the searchers have everywhere “drawn blank.’ Hope is Avbff-nigh dead among the relatives of the men in this Lo&’t Legion, but every Sunday atHhe little churches of the parishes affected, prayers for the safe return of this little band of heroes are said, for there is just a chance that, as Captain Coxon and 12 men of the battalion are knoAvn to be alive and prisoners of the Turks, some, at any rate, of the missing men may have been captured alive also, and sent to some isolated village camp in Asia Minor, where the officials know no English, or do not conceive it their duty to provide the enemy with information as to the men they haA r e committed to their care.