"I HELD THE POST, SIR."

Taranaki Daily News, 22 April 1918, Page 8

"I HELD THE POST, SIR."

SINGLE-HANDED HEROIC FIGHT. (Irom Keith Murdoch, Sydney Sun's .Special Representative with the Australian Imperial Forces at the Front). My last journey on this visit has been to the \ pros Canal sector, one of the most hideous ones of the war, reeking with desolation and death. It was to learn the details of the great fight, which, if Australia still appreciates valor, should ring round the Commonwealth. Here, before the war, were lovely chateaus in lands which teemed with hird-life and flowers. Now only torn tree trunks stands above the broken masses of earth, trenchfs, and entanglements.

Au Australian statiomnaster met in this area a few nights ago many Germans >ii an awful single-handed encounter. The German raiders came across, after two hurricane bombardments, which tore the wire, smashed up the ;>uand injured the stationniaster's comrades. He stuck it grimly until alone in No Mans Land, with the next posts many yards distant, and the firing-lins a long way behind. A shell-burst near his feet stunned liim, another wounded him in the face, another sent a lump of earth crashing into his shoulder.

Then lie could see about a dozen Germans coming up in the sickly Tight of the flares. The stationmaster decided to die gamely. lie fired a fen- shots with his rifle, hut misled. Then he hurled bombs, and the nearest German dropped. The otjiers swerved round the post, in a few minutes attacking from the left. The stationmaster bombed them again, and then turned quickly and bombed and killed a German creeping in front the rear. The Germans were throwing stick-bombs from all quarters, and the stationmaster's escape was marvellous- It was a case of crouching behind the parapei and then quickly standing up, hurling a bomb and dropping down again.

At one time a German was within a few feet in front, while others wer coing on from tlime left. The Australian's bombs drove the flank attack! back into the machine-gun tire of the next post, which finished the enemyV demoralisation. The cries of the enemy wounded were pathetic. They had been told that Englishmen of weak moral were holding the posts.

They cried, "English comrade!" "English!" "Pitv!" The stationmaster crept to the wounded mens sides and took away their bombs. Later he rushed to the wounded lying in front and took tlieir arms. It was still a desperate case of his life againet others. This gallant man's only remark when relieved was, "I held the post, sir." lie is a typical civilian soldier, who had no thought of war until the call came, when he left a wife and family and came to fight for his country.