CAPTAIN WALLINGFORD.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1915, Page 3

CAPTAIN WALLINGFORD.

"HUMAN MACHINE-GUN." PRICE UPON HIS HEAD. EXPLOITS IN GALLIPOLI. A writer in the Weekly Despatch, in describing the exploits of the New Zealand and Australian troops in Gallipoli, says:—"Sir lan Hamilton has paid the Australasians a line compliment on their skill in making their way by night through rough, bad country which was unfamiliar to them. Their night march in the early hours of August 6 was a wonderful one, but it could never have been made, as they all agree, but for the remarkable genius of one man. "That man is Captain Wallingford, D.5.0., or, as they prefer to call him, the 'Human Machine-gun.' Sanders Pasha has done liirn the honor of placing a price upon his head, but thp Australasians are confident that the Turk who can earn it has not yet been born. He has impressed the fine shots of the Australian contingent with his remarkable skill and quickness with the magazine rifle. 'He can fire thirty shots in a minute with an ordinary service weapon and score a bull every time,' said one Australian. This sounds uncanny, but so are the other achievements with which he is credited.

"Captain Wallingford's prescience in the placing of machine-guns is so remarkable that the men have only to see an emplacement being made to know that the position so enforced is a safe one, where heavy fighting will surely end in an advantage to ourselves. Hiß übiquity is a standing source of astonishment to these men, who are not easily amazed. " 'I think there must be two of him,' said one Australian in describing Captain Wallingford's activities. 'One morning I saw him on Walker's Ridge with his pack and glasses and a slung rifle, and that stick with a seat on it which he always carries. Soon after I was sent to Quinn's Post, and I went by the nearest way. 'How long has Wallingford been here?' I asked the fellows when I saw him out on the ridge. 'Oil, about twenty minutes!' tliey said. How he got there I don't know.' " The Australasians owe a great deal of their knowledge of the broken country through which they marched on the early morning of August 6 to the unremitting intelligence work done by Captain Wallingford, D.5.0."