'SPOTTING THE GUNS.'

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1916, Page 7

'SPOTTING THE GUNS.'

M'D SPOTTED. FRENCH i FFICER'S THRILLING STORY. A special correspondent of London Daily Graphic says: After a long walk through the uniform' chaps of the So nuns*, T enme upon underground (lie headquarters of a cerlain General. A captain whom T had known :n faris had. been —and indeed, ftill was—attached to his (staff, though he was away recovering; from the offeels of his fifth wound. .The golden M '.V n f h's pluck and adventure may, perhaps, be put forward as some slight compensation for the cruel moral and material devastation of this war.

His first wound was received in the 'attic of the Alarne. Between the Marne and the Somme he wa? wounded on three occasions, sind he received his iast wound on the Somme.

He had goae out to a German observation post to try -in;! locate the position of some battorie? of 8-inch guns, which y.'f-rc causing a great deal Gf annoyance, i his post hid just been captured, and the only way of reaching it was to crawl fiom shell-holi; to shcll-holf. It -onsisted of a small tree sufficiently high to eive a fair view over the flat plains on the south of the Somme. The Germans had fitted up round it a kind of scaffolding, which mide it possible for them to Uve a view of the French lines without being expose 1

STRIPPED OF HIS CLOTHES The capta ;i found when he bad crawlea to the tree and climbed up the scaffolding that he was in full view of the enemy. His appearance was greeted with a salvo of sheils, which burst much nearer than was comfortable. A splinter rr two hit the scaffolding. Said the captain: The platform on which I was standing was getting very shaky, so I tied myself to the trunk of the tree with my belt, I reckoned it would take a direct lit to bring it down. T had no difficulty in 'spotting' the' batteries that were firing on 115 and," having accomplished my mission, began to climb down. •'At that moment an eight-inch shell exploded immediately beneath me. I was in the very centre of the explosion, and consequently was untouched by any sp'inter. The displacement of air knocked me clean out, and, as I discovered when I came to myself, stripped off my breeches, .vest, and tunic, leaving me as bare as a wo-m. There were SOD francs in my tunic, and never a trace of them cr.uld I find. They had vanished into thin air. ' Pulling myself together I took a greatc'at off the body of a dead Frenchman lying near, and with only this to clothe me I went back to the peste de eommandement.

PICKED UP UNCONSCIOUS. "Just befir? I got there a 'arge splinter of shell hit me on the lead; my helmet tookoiost of the shock, ant som? small fragments entered my brain. I was picked up lying unconscious in the trench, and no one could understand what was tfcf- meaning of a naked man lying there with nothing hut a private's greatcoat to cover him. However, someone who knc.v me identified me, and I ■was able to give an account of my mission." As a matter of fact, the captain relr.aiued a.t hi:' post, refusing to be evacuated for thr?e days. He only consented tr* he carried io the rear when the effects of his wound rendered him completely blind and Irid paralysed him on one side. The operation of trepanning was satisfactorily performed, and now it is only 011 the express orders of his superior officer, that the captain consents to remain on sick leave.