A BISHOP AT THE FRONT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 17 March 1917, Page 6

A BISHOP AT THE FRONT.

Bishop Cleary has had some wonderful escapes from death whilst on the Somme front which goes to show that the Bishop was something more than a chaplain in name only, in a letter to the Auckland clergy he says: “In the biggest ‘strafe’ against us, tens of thousands of all sorts of shells were poured in torrents over our lines with, happily, comparatively little loss of life. But there were many wonderfuh escapes of a kind that one is tempted to refer to as miraculous. But my own escape from a high explosive 5.9 inch German shell may perhaps present some point of Interest to you. The shell exploded only eight feet from where three of us —one a young English artillery officer observer — were standing side by side in the the front line in the height of the bombardment. The shell explosion made a great hole in the fortunately soft earth, and mud was cast on and above us, and for some eighteen hours afterwards there was a highly unpleasant singing in my ears. Two of us three picked ourselves up as quickly as possible. The other —the young artillery officer at my right—never rose again. I drew him into cover as two other shells burst near by, one of them covering us with much earth and rubbish; then looked at the bleeding wound in his head with a view to rendering first aid, but the fine valiant young fellow wag" past all human aid, a fragment of the shell having taken off a great part of the left side of his head. /During the bombardment in question of a piece of shrapnel struck my steel helmet, markedly denting and polishing it, and a ‘77’ exploded right over the heads of a lieutenant and myself, throwing over ns with some violence the contents of a number of sandbags.”