YPRES BAYONET CHARGE.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1915, Page 11 (Supplement)

YPRES BAYONET CHARGE.

ALCKLANDEK'S EXPERIENCE. SCENE OF GItEAT SLAUGHTER. An interesting description, of how he was wounded at the battle of Ypres is given in a letter to his mother, Mrs. E. 11. Grey, Church Road, Epsom, by Rifleman A. M. Grey, 4th King's Royal Rifles. -Rifleman Grcyi joined the Fiji contingent, and was drafted to the King's Royal Rifles upon arrival in England. Writing from Netley Hospital, Southampton, under date May 9, 1915, Rifleman Grey says; "I will try to describe to the best of my ability the experiences I have been through, although they are so numerous that 1 will only be able to write the half of them. As you know, we went to the front about two months ago, and I am now lying in hospital wounded in the head hy a 'Whistling Rufus' shell and a bullet in the leg. It was in the big tattle of i Ypres that I had the pleasure of being rendered hors de combat. It was in! a terrific bayonet, charge at 4 o'clock] in the morning, when we charged the Germans, who had been shelling us for about 24 hours. When we got the order to charge the "blood went tingling] through my veins, I can tell you. By' Jove, I shall never forget thewayi w'e scaled out of our trenches and dashed over the intervening space to the German trenches, yelling and shouting like mad- j men. |

"When we jumped down amongst the Germans they began to retreat, and. we bayoneted them as fast as we could. The first one I got my bayonet through I could not get it out again, so I let go and grabbed hold of another rifle. By this time they were in full retreat and wc after them, jabbing the bayonets through their tacks. They began to surrender in hundreds, falling down on their knees and putting their hands up over their heads, but we gave them no quarter, and slaughtered them in thtfusands, I think you will see by the paper that they lost over 50,000' that day, so you can imagine what the battlefield was like.

"A sudden darkness came over mc, and T knew no more until I woke in a field j hospital and found myself swathed in bandages. Then my senses came, hack, and T asked the doctor what was the 1 matter with me, and he told me that I bad loft the. tack of my head on the battlefield, and that I had a souvenir in my right leg, a 'bullet having found a lodging place therein. Well, T was shifted from there to a wine cellar out of the way of shells, which were screaming all round us. The. next morning at two o'clock the ambulance took me to a hospital in Berlien (Belgium), where T wan properly dressed. Then T was put into a train and sent to a Canadian hospital in Boulogne, where I stopped {or ten davs before Vmg sent across the Channel to England. T was under X-rays in the Canadian hospital, ( anil then had to undergo an operation' and have a piece of bone taken out of my skull, which had tae.u fractured. _T am now getting along fine and nni going to a convalescent home for about a month, nfter which T hope to be ready for tin front again."