ON ACTIVE SERVICE.

MARLBOROUGH TROOPER'"S

LETTER

Following are extracts from a letter received by his relatives from Trooper Charles McMahon, who left New Zealand with the Mounted Rifles of the Main Body, and who left Egypt with the Mounteds on May sth. The letter is dated June 29th, and is written after seven weeks of warfare:

"It was hard for us to leave our horses behind, but we are told we shall get them when we resjoli country suitable for horsemen. We spend our time in digging ourselves in and trying to get a shot at the enemy. We dig to get at them, and they dig to get at us. We are entrenched on the side of a hill, and in some places wo are only 15 yards from the Turks, and not more than 30. We have made the place safer since we have been here, and the casualties

! are one-sixth of what they were. I Roads are coming, scrub is going, and

the dug-outs, our places of refuge from the bombs, are not bad.

"I shall never forget in a hurry the sinking of the Triumph. Wo were on a hill, and saw everything from the ciine the Germans torpedoed her until she sank. A noise like a. distant gun, a cloud of -smoke and water rising in the air, but not very high ; she went on her side, remained a few minutes, then slowly turned over till you could almost see her keel, and .sank. I don't know what we should have done without the warships; we could not • have landed or remained very long when we did if it had not been for them. Now when the Turks are. wanted to get a 'move on' a couple of broadsides does it.

"Several of the boys from there— 1 mcfiii Picton and Havelock—havw beon wounded or killed. Daltoit, Taylor (from Koromiko), Sergt. Boden, and Sergt. Patterson were killed alongside me. The first fight we wore in poor 'Dick' Boden, 'Col.' Patterson, 'Bob' Anderson, a Nelson fellow, and I were on guard on top of a hill like the point near Portage that we call the peninsula, but not su big. A party of Turks attacked us, and we killed IS and wounded two, for, luckily for us they were poor rifle shots. It was.on the same hill later on that Boden and Patterson were to fall. They were fine fellows, and I thought a lot of them. On the other side of the hill the rest of our troop with the. gun section" killed dozens. The ground was covered with dead Turks, so they asked for .an armistice to bury their dead; and yet at the end of another two days about 1500 Turks were dead in front of our trenches. Poor 'Col.' Patterson was wounded one -evening just before we were relieved by another squadron. I stayed out on the hill with him till twelve o'clock, when Father Dore came with two stretcher-bearers. Poor fellow! He died half an hour after wo got him into camp.

"1 often long for a junck, not a slice, of cake, and when eating bully beef and biscuits I think how I would enjoy fruit pie and cream.

"Bates has been ill. and is sent to tho base. Hume has been sick this last week. (Tpr. P. C. Hume has since been sent to Malta). lam with the Morrison boys and Sergt.-Major Pigou, and you would laugh if you saw the way the lot of us scamper to our dug-outs' when the shrapnel comes! We do burrow into the ground, but you can't blame us in trying to save our skins."

[Word was received by his relatives on Saturday that Trooper McMahon had been killed in action.]