THE LATE SERGEANT VERNON.

His Belf-Sacrificing Disposition. A Noble Son DUs for the Country He Loved. His Dying Words: "We Came Here From New Zealand." ■Sapper J. E. MacManus, of the Tunnelling Corps, writes in an interesting manner from somewhere in France or Belgium regarding the work of the Tunnelling Corps and the death of the late Sergeant Vernon, who was killed by shell fire. He says :

The good luck that has attended our mining operations still continues. Every effort on our part to blow in the German galleries has been successful. Every effort on the enemy's part to blow in ours has failed. So successful have we been that when we first started here the enemy were under our lines in six places. They are now not under our lines in one place. The successful countermining on the part of our company has so unnerved them that, to use an expression that is commonly used to signify the fear arising from confusion as to our exact position, "they have got their wind up." They have beeu blowing up their own galleries, believing we are near them, thus doing our work Indestroying their own galleries. So nervy have they become that they blew up some of their own barbed wire in an effort to blow in a gallery that was not there. We have sustained no casualties in our work down below.

Some little incident at all times favored us. When we first started the enemy contemplated a big scheme. They intended getting well under our lines and Mowing up in a number of places, taking advantage of the confusion that would arise, and thus seizing the commanding positions that are the key to the successful holding of the salient. Being thwarted in their original intentions, they still determined to do their best with the mines they sprang. Misunderstanding the exact locality of '.*te mines they laid. a number of their troops who were sent ahead went up with their own mines. The remainder who did get in our trenches were unsupported. For it so happened that in retaliation for the enemy act in bombarding our sapheads our artillery had arranged to bombard their trenches. Therefore, as their mine went up two minutes prior to the time arranged for the retaliation, the troops of the Kaiser were caught in their own trenches, and were unable to reinforce their own advance party. The result was that they lost more heavily than was at first anticipated. As our galleries which suffered were soon cleared, without delay, of the bit of earth knocked down, and as we proceeded so Buccssfully that a few days after a main gallery of the enemy wns blown in, together with their working party, the enemy have sinco boen " hearing things " and shooting wildly. All this is evidence that they have lost their nerve, due to our luck, or, may be, as the British general commanding our sector termed it, " our magnificent work." The old division with which we worked has left this sector, and has been replaced by another division. The officer commanding the departing division wrote a congratulatory letter to our commanding officer, Major Duigan. In that letter he stated that our work had restored a feeling of confidence and security in his own troops. This letter was placed in orders, and, I understand, has been forwarded to New Zealand as proof of the opinions of those who are best fitted to judge the value of our work.

A few of our men htive been wounded, and one mnn from Otago—Sergeant Vernon—has been killed by shellfire. Sergeant Vernon was born and reared in Otago. His family reside at Coal Creek, Roxburgh. He was the sergeant of my relief. He was the oiie man, I can safely say without exaggeration, whom I

would have preferred to see the very last to go. But fate decreed otherwise. Sergeant Vernon was a man with iron nerve. who understood his work of mining thoroughly. As evidence of his self-stcritieing disposition, I have seen him (when the fatigue party under his control feared vhe enemy's fire) with, his own hands build a wall of sandbags to protect the dump from the enemy's view. I have seen him down below, where shattered ground required timbering, even excusing himself iu such cases by saying : " A little exercise will do me good ; let me do this." I have seen him. when shells were-fal-ling at the rate of 105 a minnte. appear at our saphcad to make sure we were not hurt. When the enemy sprang some mines and buried some of our infantry, it was Sergeant Vernon who, on discovering that rtvo men were still alive, and through fear of enemy fire in daytime were not to be dug out until night time, decided they should be dug out, there and then. T shall not forget that memorable morning, when he came and, explaining the circumstances, asked who would volunteer to dig them out, as they would be dead by night if left. I was so thrilled by the spirit of the man, which is so typical of the colonial miner, that. I eagerly volunteered to go. I was fortunate in being one of the men selected. He led to a spot where we had to crawl to avoid being seen, and started to dig whore blood besmeared the ground. For on that very spot in the dawning hours a Red Cross man was killed while engaged in the- work of rescue. We had worked but barely half an hour when the English officers, stimulated to activity by the energies of Sergeant Vernon, decided to carry on sap-

ping in the trench we made. It was Sergeant Vernon who then spoke up and pointed out that as his men understood their work, they did not require his supervision, ho might be permitted to romnin. '' I might bo raoro useful than your men," he said, " as, being a miner I can timber the earth up to prevent them being smothered. Tho men were rescued, and such was his modesty that I have since learned that all the credit he took to himself was an admission that he helped to dig some men out. Like all brave men, he was modest, and his deeds to him were but incidents that occurred in his daily work, of which he rarely spoke. These are but a few of the many incidents just told to illustrate the wonderful self-sacrificing disposition of the man. When the fateful shell did its deadly work, almost severing his leg, shattering his arms, and injuring his body, he calmly gave final instructions to his lieutenant about the disposition of his effects, and sent a farewell message to his wife. Like all heroes, he was a good-living man and attached to his home. When being carried to the hospital by the stretcherbearers, he overheard one of them say he was heavy. " Throw my leg away." he said ; " it will make me lighter. It ain't much use to me now." On overhearing a remark about the brave manner in which be bore his injuries, he quickly replied: "But we tame here from New Zealand. Tonmiv !"

Never were the words of Cullen's song used with more telling effect. When he was laid on the table at the hospital and expired peacefully almost immediately after lie was brought in, the magical effect of these words, "We came here from New Zealand," was brought home with full force to his hearers, and must ever live in the memory of them. It would seem as if the man look a pride in dying, so that the world would know that n New Zealander can show the way to die. He was born in Otago. He was a product of New Zealand. We may go hack into the past traditions of our race and search the pages of history for brave deeds and brave deaths for the honour of the Mother Land, but nothing more glorious can be found than the death of Sergeant Verijioii. Such deeds and sueh deaths add a lustre to the already glorious achievements of our New Zealand troops. And he was the first among the New Zealand Engineer Tunnelling Company to go—that company of New Zealand miners who. through the supervision of men like .Sergeant Vernon. w6re instrumental in doing work which has been warmly praised because of its usefulness. Certain it is that whenever the " Last Post '' is sounded I will always think of Otago, that reared such a noble son, and of his dying words, delivered with such telling effect: "We came here from New Zealand.'' Convinced am I that whenever the memory of this great war recalls the imperishable deeds of our troops, the telling words of Sergeant Vernon, uttered under such tragical circumstances, will fire men's souls. He died for the country he loved.