DEAD LAY AROUND.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 27 January 1917, Page 3

DEAD LAY AROUND.

HIGH EXPLOSIVES BLOW FIFTEEN FEET HOLES.

Writing liomo to his mother, a Leeds man, in hospital, gives a vivid account of his terrible experiences. “I am not much hurt—just a shrapnel wound on the left cheek, another on my right elbow, and a German machine-gun- bullet in my neck. I was in the great advance on July Ist, and ray! it was an awful do. All our four company stretcher-bearers arc wounded. I was the last and I saw the others hurt. 1 was in our front line, dressing wounded all the time. I could not follow the advance, for hundreds of our men were crawling back wounded and bleeding to be dressed. “One chap asked me to help him, and ag I went towards him —on the Lid-~his head was blown off. Twice I had the trench blown on to me, and had to dig myself and my case out. One chap I was dressing on the temple had his left arm taken off by shrapnel while I was dressing him. I was in it for about five and a half hours—dead everywhere around—before I was hit, and it was really my own fault. “As the other stretcher-bearers had gone away wounded, I was on my own. So 1 asked a bearer if he would help me to carry the unwalkable cases ‘over the lid ’ to the doctor, for the trenches were all blown in. He did, and wo got off with. No. 1 ease —one of my own pals. \V C walked back on to the top with shrapnel and high explosives blowing 15-feet holes all round ns. We went on until a machine-gunner spotted us trying to get into the trench at the doctor ’s place, and he rattled away at us, but to no effect. “Neither of us bothered with danger, so we went back the same,way and took another case, and the gunner potted at us all the time and missed. So we tried yet again and again, and got through. But, as I got up on top with an empty stretcher to go back he hit me in the neck. Then, as I sat trying to bind myself up, a big shell blew mo and all the earth around me up about eight feet in the air. I lauded on my back, and found 1 wusnT dead, us I expected, but with a face and arm wound. J got bound up, asked the bearer to go on. carrying wounded with me, but h e wouldn’t. He made me go to the doctor, and then I walked to hospital. So here I am, and jolly lucky, too. ’ ’