AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Taihape Daily Times, 17 May 1918, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

0 AUSTRALIA’S RECRUITING BOOM NEWCASTLE, May 16. The recruiting boom continues". There is to be a military parade tomorrow. with an attempt to enlist five hundred during the "day. A deferred battalion is being formed for those not quite up to the standard. They will be. gradually developed until fit to draft into the force. -{ b: THE DOMINIONS’ FLAGS. > |r. d LONDON, May 16. " ; General McCay, General Hart, and Captain Oates, on behalf of their Governments, presented Australian, New Zealand and South African flags to Exeter, in gratitude for its hospitality to overseas troops. The flags were deposited in the Guildhall with commemorative tablets. The Mayor (Sir James Owen) said the ancient city had never received gifts of greater significance. They were emblematic of the unity of the nations of the Empire. TRAGEDY REVEALED BY THE CAMERA. Johannesburg. | Remarkable details are published i regarding the death of Colonel Johann W. Colenbrander, C. 8., who fell from ■his horse and was drowned in the Klip river while acting the part of Lord Chelmsford (the British Com-mander-in-Chicf in the Zulu Campaign of 1879) in a film entitled "The Symbol of Sacrifice.”

The scene was intended to depict Lord Chelmsford going to the rescue of the garrison at Rorke’s Drift, and the fatal film, which has now been developed, shows that eight men were riding two abreast. Suddenly one horse, getting ito deep water, swam in front of the colonel. This upset the other horses, and all started to plunge seven of the riders being flung into the river.

Colonel Colenbrander, who appears to have remained calm throughout, was unhorsed, but remounted, was thrown a second time, and then swam off strongly to one of the boats. Eyewitnesses say he actually touched the boat, and then sank. A man who was in the water with Colonel Colenbrander stated that the colonel seemed to be dazed. He was holding his horse by the bridle, and the man shouted out, “Let the horse have hishead and he’ll pull you out,” but the colonel appeared not to hear. William Brown, a returned soldier, who went through the East African campaign with the lOtht South African Horse, and was acting as the colonel’s trumpeter in the film, was also drowned.