WAR CORRESPONDENT KILLED.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 4 September 1917, Page 6

WAR CORRESPONDENT KILLED.

SHOT DOWN ON HILL 65 OVERLOOKING LENS. PARIS. M. Andre Tudesq, special correspondent of Le Journal on fee British fronts reports the death of M. Serge Basset, correspondent of Le Petit Paarisien, before Lens. “We were climbing Hill 65,” he ■writes, “captured the day before yesterday, and which dominates at close quarters the outskirts of the town of Lens, when suddenly, like a crack of a whip, the sound of a bullet whistling through the air was heard ; and our friend slowly fell to the ground. /‘One of us ran over the exposed ground under a shower of bullets towards some stretcher bearers installed in a shell-hole some distance away Pour ambulance men made for the dying man and'-hoisted the Red Cross flag, but the Germans in their fury only increased their hurricane of misles. A look-out telephoned to the battery, and on the spot where our friend died shells rained at the rate of four every second and unceasingly. “During the half hour -he lingered . before expiring, ‘Do you mourn f me, my friends,’ Basset feebly murmured; T am dying a soldier’s death, as I alway s wished.’ ” The Minister of War has decided to award the War Cross with Palm to the late M. Serge Basset. (M Basset is the first correspondent to be killed in the war A Press photographer was killed at the Dardanelles, and Messrs Henry Nevison and Prevost Battersby have been wounded. Mr Ashmead-Bartlett was saved from the Majestic when the ship was sinking.