HEROISM IN AFGHANISTAN.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 110, 17 March 1879, Page 3

HEROISM IN AFGHANISTAN.

We take tho following from the Daily News with reference to" tho first to fall" in the Aflghan war The description which our special correspondent sends us of the death of Major Birch and Lieutenant Fitzgerald deserves an abiding place in our military history. No ono will read without emotion tho passages which tell how these gallant officers met death. A young officer named Maclean had rushed on, with a handful of men to support him, into a spot where 110 was in deadly peril, Major Birch would not be stayed from hurrying to his assistance, and received a shot which killed him. The handful of men to whose help ho had gone were forced to fall back, and his body was left upon the field. One of his young officers, named Fitzgerald, could not endure the .thought of abandoning the body of his brave chief. The men of his own command shrank from following; ho called for volunteers, and 15 men from a. detachment of Sikhs-gallantly answered to his call. Fitzgerald had actually succeeded in raising Birch's body when a third bullet—he had received two wounds already—struck him, and he fell dead. Tho bodies wero found next day uninjured by the enemy, and were laid, our correspondent tells us, in ' a soldier's grave close by tho head-quarters camp, at Ali Muiijid.' No episode of fight at once more gallant and more touching is recorded, we are inclined to think, in the history, or described in the romance, of war. That such lives should bo wasted in an unnecessary and an unjust war is deplorable ; but the splendor of such devotion is not clouded in any way by tho errors of the policy which caused it to be thrown away. Tho young officer Fitzgerald was an Irishman. It was tho pen of an Irish Nationalist member of Parliament that described the officers and men fighting in Afghanistan as 'butchers.' Fitzgerald's countrymen in general will bo able to say how far his deeds have corresponded with such a description."