A CHARMED LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 October 1915, Page 5

A CHARMED LIFE.

YOUTHFUL V.C. Apparently the luckiest man among the British troops at the front in Flariders is Lieutenant Smyth, of a native Indian regiment, the 15th Sikhs, who hat been awarded the V.C. Ho ia only 20 years of age, but in a few months of warfare he has had many escapes from death. The following picture of him U drawn by Mr. 11. M. Tomlinson, a British war correspondent:—"l remember a road behind some famous trenches and a few 'officer companions there. None of us elders were comfortable. We were the only people about. The rest were in hiding. Passing overhead was a procession of horrible sounds. On either hand columns of smoke were bursting, and every house we passed was an adandoned ruin.

"There was a boy with us, a short, ruddy, smiling officer lad, with merry grey eyes. He seemed quite out of place there. He was altogether too cherubic, innocent, and happy. He glanoed up smiling at the passing shells exactly a* if he hud never heard them before and did not know what they wbre, Even his tunic was not exactly the regulation pattern, as though'he were unaware even of the necessity to be dressed like otter officers, I thought he was a new arrival who would learn much more presently. "Later I was told, as a huge joke, that that buy was once lighting his cigarette when a bullet swept the match out of hia lingers. His cap had been blown off fiv« times by explosions. His tunic was \\hat it was because it was a makeshift. His old one hud been torn offjiis back by machine-gun and rifle fire. He had dragged, that lad, a heavy bo"x of bomb* over the corpses in a trench, a targe* for every explosive abomination the Germans could shower round him and hia men. Hia men were all killed, bat ha got through with the bomb* and saved a position. In factr he wa« Lieutenant Smyth, and he had just got his 7,0.*