GENERAL'S SIMPLE TOMB.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 November 1917, Page 6

GENERAL'S SIMPLE TOMB.

PATHETIC SCENE WHEN HEROOFFICER MEETS DEATH. - Here is the story of how BrigadierGeneral C. H. J. Brown, D. 5.0., N.Z.S.C. met his death. A quiet, unobtrusive man, painstaking, and thoroughly sincere and conscientious he had already won the respect and affection of his staff and of his men. He it was that, just after the capture of Mcesines had walked all along his front line and reported everything

satisfactory. This he had done in the face of heavy shelling. He succeeded in getting safely back to his headquarters during the. next day. Next day, while walking at the front, in company with other officers, an enemy shrapnel shell burst low overhead, killing him instantly. It

was a mou/nful little group of New Zealand officers that subsequently gathered for the Among those who attended were General Brown's Corps and Divisonal Commanders. Representatives of the French and Belgian Missions were also present. The body was borne to the grave by a brigadier-general and five colonels, the bjjlnd of a New Zealand regiment playing the Dead March in "Saul."

The little profession made its way down a pathway, bordered now by many hundreds of wooden crosses, and gathered around the grave to listen to the beautiful words of the burial service read by the Padre who had slipped a surplice over his khaki. It was a beautiful summer day the trees were at their best, and the fields were gay with wild flowers As we went down the narrow path between the crosses with our laden stretcher, other stretchers, empty were returning down another iane.

Beside the • grave, bare-headed stood the General's "own two sons. It is not often that one could be witness of such a scene on the battlefields of Flanders > Our hearts\ went out to them Here were these two young : New Zealanders, who had come so many miles from the Antipodes, burying their own father within sound of the guns in the battle in which &U three -had fought. One's thoughts flew back, too j across the leagues of distance to our own ..land where the widow and the mother would have the deep sympathy of all whose privilege it was to know "the husband and the father, and especially to know the soldier. .^.. And then the final words: of the burial service and the bugle n.ofes of the "Last Post," beautiful, yet s,ad as his comrades laid him in his, restingplace "No useless coffin enclosed his breast." It was a simple . spfdier's funeral. The two boys took a last look, and the little procession reformed and marched back out of the cemetery. The band marched off to a lively tune. Then Generals and the other officers and the two sons of the dead warrior went back to their work, a little more determined" perhaps, to fight on. i