AN EPIC FIGHT

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 27 February 1917, Page 5

AN EPIC FIGHT

A fight with fisticuffs between two British soldiers amid the screams of German shells gained for one man the Military Medal and saved the life of another. One morning, when the enemy Mas shelling Ypres Cathdral, Corporal Ernest Bruce, an ex-policeman of Portsmouth, noticed a shell's draught of wind knock an engineer cyclist off his bicycle, and hurl him with terrific force against a house. Unmindful of the risk, Bruce went to pick up the cyclist. No sooner had he got the man on his feet, however, than the engineer, who had lost his reason, dashed at him like fury. Bruce stuck to his man, and, amid the shrieking shell?, the falling masonry, and the general labyrinth of death, a battle royal ensued. At last Bruce got his opening, and with a terrific right to the jaw sent his infuriated opponent to the ground unconscious. After Bruce had carried the cyclist to a place of safety he himself was wounded, a piece of shrapnel severing the jugular vien and schaping the carotid artery.