SOME STORIES OF THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 October 1916, Page 9

SOME STORIES OF THE WAR.

WHAT SIEN CAN AND DO DO. HIS WAY TO THE FRONT. "Wilfred Steele recently travelled 1500 miles from the depths of the Australian backwoods to Adelaide in order to enlist. He caught the nearest camel, took a week's supply of water and a few cuts of salt beef with him, and set out. When he reached civilisation ho substituted horses for the camel, and finally did 700 miles by rail," says the Times. INDIVIDUAL HEROES. "I have heard the story of a stretch-er-bearer of the Lincolns who crept out some 400 yards at night right up to the German wire at a point where another regiment had been attacking, and there picked up a wounded captain of that other regiment and brought him safely back, though the ground was swept with rifle and machine-gun fire," says the Times correspondent. "Certain men of one of our regiments had pushed out and held a desperate and a most hopeless advanced position. Some men of the Royal Engineers crawled out to tliem literally oil their stomachs, and there, working in the dark, put up wire round our little outpost. The sappers brought back word that the men certainly could not live. But they did, and it was the wire that saved them. "It was a captain of the Lincolns again (Captain ), who was wounded in the heel and went on. Then he was wounded in the thigh, and he still went on. He was wounded in the arm, and not even that stopped him. It was a fourth bullet in the head that killed him, and he died instantaneously, lying with his arm raised still waving his men on. THEIR HEADS TOWARDS THE ENEMY. "That, indeed, is one of the heartrending and splendid things that one sees everywhere. Our dead lie always*, it seems, with their heads forward towards the enemy. I have not heard of any man who has seen a place where they lie as if they had turned. •'Some day, perhaps, a poem will be inspired by the tale of the young lieutenant of the same battalion who had leaped into the enemy's trench and, it is conjectured, had leaped straight upon an exploding bomb. He was dreadfully mangled, but they got him hack, only to die as he was being attended to. And lie died smiling, saying that everything was all right as long as we had got the trench." A PLUCKY SERGEANT. "The enemy's shell-fire was concentrated heavily upon this one bit of trench away out in the open, and the ground was ploughed up with high explosives," says Mr. Phillip Gibbs in the Chronicle. "The machine-guns were taken back, but the British held on until at last only an officer anil six men were left. Those who came back unwounded numbered in the end only one officer and one man —with the exception of a sergeant, who stayed behind with a wounded Irishman. He would not leave his comrade, and for thirty-six hours stayed out in his exposed position, with heavy shells falling on every side of him. "The Irishman was delirious, and making such a noise that his friend knocked him on the head to keep him quiet. Every time a shell burst near him he shouted out, 'You've missed me again, Fritz.' But the sergeant himself kept his wits. He is a Lancashire man, and with all the dogged pluck of Lancashire. "When the bombardment quietened down he brought back his friend, and then went out to No Man's Land to search for another one. THE ENEMY'S COURAGE. "But let us not forget that our men have not the monopoly of courage in this war," adds Mr. Gibbs. "We havo against us a brave enemy, and again and again during this battle our officers and men have paid a tribute, to the stubborn fighting qualities of the German soldiers. 'For goodness .sake,' said one officer, 'get rid of that strange idea in the minds of many people at home that we are fighting old men and boys and cripples.' "All the Germans we have met and captured have been big, hefty fellows, well fed until our bombardment stopped their food and with plenty of pluck in the JL 'The courage of their machinegirflVs especially is—worse luck for us —splendid.' As far as food: goes thßritchword of the German people is 'S® i-Tij first.' That they were suffering themselves seems certain from the lett :rs found in great numbers in their captured dug-outs. It seems to me incredible that these should he fictitious. They bear in every line the imprint of bitter troth, and they read like a cry front starving people. PITIFUL LETTERS. "'You reproach me with writing so little to you. What can I write? If I told the truth about conditions here I should be locked up, and as I do not wish to write lies to yon I had better say nothing. We have tickets for everything now —flour, meat, sausage, butter, fat, potatoes, sugar, soup, etc. We 'are really nothing more than tickets ourselves.' "And in another letter from Cologne: "Hunger is making itself felt here. During the week none of the families received any potatoes. The allowance now is one egg per head per week and of bread and 50 grammes of butter per head per day. England is not so wrong about starving us out. If the war lasts three months longer we shall be done. It is a terrible time for Germany. God is punishing us too severely.' "And from another, dated Dresden: We have had no meat for six weeks. I am afraid it will soon he all over path. There have been riots again in the market. One can have money and still not he able to buy anything.' "There is only one satisfaction in these pitiful letters. It is the hope it gives us that the enemy—not those poor women and children, hut the Devil at the hack of the business—will realise soon that war does not pay, and will haul down the flag with its jkull and crossboncs." FOOTBALL TO START ATTACK. "An instance of ail attack by a company being started by the kicking off of a football has just come to light," says the Telegraph. "The story is told in a letter from a major of a Surrey regiment to the mother of the captain who kicked the football. The officer writes: " 'The captain in command of one of our leading companies in the assault on the Ist of this month led his company most gallantly and with the utmost coolness up to the German front line trench, when he was shot. . . . He started his company in the assault by kicking off a football, which hia men dribbled right up to the German trenches. I havo been able to get the

ball since, and will, of course, send it to von if you should want it, but I and all the other officers of the battalion would be very grateful to you if you would allow us to keep it as a regimental trophy.'" TALES OF GALLANTRY. "One hears many tales of great individual 'gallantry in the recent fighting. Iwo instances will suffice to show the quality of our men," say» the Times, correspondent. "In one case a man of tho Northumberland Fusiliers was sent back with a message. He had to pass through a zone exposed to rifle fire and was mortally wounded. He struggled on, however, and just managed to reach one of our advanced posts. As he sank down, he could only muster strength enough to point to a spot on his tunic and say, •It's in here!' And he died. "The second instance is that of a lieutenant in a Yorkshire regiment who was wounded and fell. As he %, he was sniped (as the German way is) and was hit twice more. With the three wounds, after twelve hours in the open, he managed to crawl back under cover of the darkness. On the way he found two unwounded Germans hiding in a shell hole, and, with his revolver, he brought them home as prisoners." THK GROUND FOUGHT OVER. "lo you at a distance, who cannot actually see the ground, I do not know how I am ever to convey an adequate idea of the difficulties which our men have had to contend with. We have so far been in general, pushing up a slightly rising slope to a low plateau, the whole distance being full of dips and hollows and creases in the ground and studded all over with little clumps of woodland. "Everywhere our advance has had to be of the most methodical character, 110 step forward being possible without relation to some other step. As one sees the ground after our men have gone through it is almost incredible that they ever did it. '■One extraordinary feature, of the operations here was owing to the weather. The condition of the trenches became indescribable, so that progress along them was sometimes quite impossible. Even when the water subsided the, miul was so deep and tenacious (it still remains so) that in many cases men literally wrenched their feet out of their boots. Bombers havo told me that it was impossible to throw bombs with any effect, because no man can throw his best when fixed immovably up to his knees in liquid glue." CAVALRY THROUGH GROWING CORN. "A detachment of the enemy were ■successfully accounted for by a squadron of Dragoon Guards, the first opportunity for mounted action which has been afforded to our cavalry since 1014," reported the British Headquarters. "The troopers charged through fields of growing corn, an episode recalling one of the most famous of Meissonier's pictures," says the Times, "Our special correspondent says that troop of thu Deccan Horse, a famous Indian cavalry regiment armed with lances, joined in the ride, though this is not mentioned in the official reports." . "The Dragoons put their lances down and rode straight into the wheat," says "Mr. Phillip Gibbs in the Chronicle. "They killed several men, and then turned and rode back, and charged again, among scattered groups of German infantry. Some of them prepared to withstand the charge with fixed bayonets. Others were panic-stricken, and ran forward crying Tity! Pity!' and clung to the saddles and stirrup-leathers of the Dragoon Guards. Though on a small scale it was a cavalry action of the old style, the first on the Western front since October of the first year of the war. "With thirty-two prisoners they rode on slowly, still reconnoitring the open country on the skirt of Delville Wood, until they came again under machinegun fire, and drew back. AN AEROPLANE CAME OVERHEAD. "As they did so an aeroplane came overhead, skimming very low, at no more, than 300 ft. above ground. The cavalry turned in their saddles to stare at it for a moment or two, believing that it was a hostile machine. But no bullets came their way, and in another moment it stopped over the German infantry concealed in the wheat and fired at them with a machine-gun. Four times it circled and stooped, and fired, creating another panic among the enemy, and then flew off, leaving the cavalry full of admiration for this daring feat. They could ride no further, owing to the nature of the ground, and that night they dug themselves in. German guns searched in vain for them, and the cavalry to-night is full of pride, for their day may come again." "The war on both sides is a war of citizens turned soldiers, of 'fathers of families' who havo come forth to fight for their homes," says the Glasgow Herald. STRUGGLE ALONG. "Colonel John Jacob Astor's young widow loses the income on five million dollars by re-marrying. But as the second husband has about three million, it is believed that they will be able to struggle along even at the present high cost, of living."—San Francisco Newsletter.