FAINT-HEARTED V.C.'S.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 239, 15 November 1909, Page 3

FAINT-HEARTED V.C.'S.

HEROES WHO FAINT AT THE SIGHT OF BLOOD. MUTINY VETERAN'S. FEAR. A story of two brothers who always fainted at the sight of cold blood, though both won the Victoria Cross in the Afghan war, was told by Sir T. Lauder , liniiiloii in his evidence before the Bv piirtmcntal Committee on Coroners. If they biiw a lirup of i-old blood, said Si,Laiider, they would full to the Hour unconscious. Hot blood did mil ailed th>'ii>. This statement is corroborated by a gallant colonel, one of the last surviving officers of the 32ud Regiment, who received the Victoria Cross for distinguished service during the defence of Luckuow,

"It iB a fact I am wholly unable to explain." hj» said, discussing the subject, 'but notwithstanding all the terrible slaughter constantly around me during tihe Mutiny, 1 live in fear of the sigh', of cold blood. 1 cannot say 1 have actually fainted at the sight of it, but my feelings in the calm evening of life are such that 1 feci if you cut your finger in my presence, I should be so overcome as to be unconscious." Yet here is the same officer wliose deeds of gallantry when a lieutenant of the 32nd occupy nearly two whole pages ill Lieutenant-Colonel Knollys' and Major Elliott's joint volume, 'The Victoria Cross Heroes."

''l cannot explain it, except it be that m the height of. warfare a man's personal sensitiveness is completely overshadowed. Though I shot many a rebel in the defence of Lncknow, and was several times smothered with the blood of men killed beside ine, yet I am too fainthearted to see even an animal led to the slaughter."

VICTORIA CROSS HERO. This is the confession of an officer who received the Victoria Cross for a most daring feat in gun-spiking; The battery he had to carry contained two guns, the embrasures of which were closed with sliding shutters, and the battery was protected by high palisades. He removed the shutters of one of the embrasures, sprang first into the battery, shot the sentry dead with his revolver, and both guns were spiked. "On one occasion," said the veteran, "I was working a gun when a bullet went right through the head of the man on the opposite side of the breach. On an- ! other occasion I was commanding a position called Shecpwash, when a bullet came through the loophole and struck the man beside me right in the neck. His blood gushed all over ine. Yet I was quite calm and undisturbed in the discharge of my duty." "Fainting at sight of blood," writes a medical correspondent, "is due to impulses, called into being by the emotions, passing down tile vagus nerves which control the beat of the heart.

"These men who fainted at the sight | of blood were able to resist its effect in time of battle because in the excitement of the moment the brain had no space left fo r generating the excessive emotions which ordinarily led to the fainting. "The woman who loses consciousness at the sight of a mouse is not necessarjlv a coward. She may be very brave indeed, yet she suffers from the idiosyncrasy of having her emotions so excessively stimulated by the sight that her common sense which assures her the mouse is quite harmless" is temporarily overpowered."