BULLET IN BODY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1938, Page 8

BULLET IN BODY

A GALLIPOLI “SOUVENIR.” EX-SOLDIER'S SURPRISE. Ever since the morning of the landing at Gallipoli—April 25, 1915 —Arthur Coombs, of Toombul, Brisbane, has carried in his body close to the spine a bullet, fired from a Mauser rifle. Yet until the other week he knew nothing about it. Coombs is now in a private hospital in Brisbane, recovering from an operation for an internal complaint, which he does not associate with war injury. “On the morning of the landing, when I was falling to take cover, something struck me,” he said. “I thought I had been hit in the body, but later I felt blood near by left shoulder blade and thought I must only have been grazed by a bullet. Later in the morning I was hit on the foot and put out of action. Doctors paid little attention to the scratch on my back, and the only ill-effect I felt was a paralysed left arm for a few days.” After a month in hospital, Coombs went back into action and fought through the rest of the war. He was nof wounded again. The bullet in his back has never inconvenienced him, and he was surprised when he saw the X-ray photographs. “If the doctor had not taken the X-ray a little too high up, the bullet might never have been discovered,,” he said.