A BRAVE BRIGADIER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXVII, Issue 9080, 30 August 1917, Page 2

A BRAVE BRIGADIER.

DEATH ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

AN IMPRESSIVE FUNERAL.

(From Captain Malcolm Ross, with the New Zealand Forces in the Field.)

Northern France, June 13

The news of the death of BrigadierGeneral C. H. J. Brown, D.5.0., N.ZIS.C, so soon after his brigade had reached the farthest line in the Battle of -Messines to which New Zealanders were ! asked i to 'go, spread quickly throughout the division, and^was received with. in^rkod expressions of deep regret. A quiet, unobstru.sive man, painstaking, and thoroughly' sincere and conscientious, he had already won the respect and the affection 'of his staff and of his men. He it was of whom I wrote in one of my earlier tolearams 'that, just after the capture of Mossines, ho had walked all along his front line:: and reported every thing satisfactory. This he had done in the face of heavy enemy shelling., Ho succeeded in getting safely back to his Headquarters during the day.

Next day, while walking at the front in company with . other ..officers, an enemy; .shrapnel shell burst, low oyer.he'ad,., killing him,instantly. -,' ■=■■ ■

It vivas a mourii'ful little;'group': : of New Zealand officers that, fiiibsf'quently gathered for the.funeral. Among those who attended were „ General Brown's Corps' and divisional commanders. "Representatives of the French and Belgian Missions also were present. . The body was borne to the-'grove by a brigadier-general and fivo colonels, the' band of a New Zealand regiment playing the I>ead March in Saul.

The littlo procession made its wa-y down a pathway, bordered now by many hundreds of wooden crosses, and gathered around the grave to listen to the beautiful words of the burial service read by the padre who had slipped a surplice over his khaki.

It was a beautiful summer day, the trees were at: their best, and tho fields were gay with wild flowers. As we went down the narrow path between the crosses with our laden stretcher, other stretchers, empty, were returning down another lane. And all the, time the planes came and went, their droning.- 1 forming, a strange accompaniment to tTie padro's monody.

Beside the grave, bare-headed, stood ! the ,lato General's own two sons. It is not'often, that one could bo- witness of such a scene on the battlefields of Flanders. Our hearts went out to them. Hero were these two young New Zealanders who had come so many thousands of miles from the Antipodes, burying their own father within sound or' the guns in the battle in which all three had fought. One's thoughts flew back, too, across the leagues of distance to our-own land where Hie widow and mother would' have.tho deep sympathy of all whoso privilege it was to know the,husband and tho father, and especially to. know, the soldier.

>Aiid\ then ' the final. words of the. burial service and the buglo notes of "Last Post,".-beautiful yet sad, as his. comrades laid him in liis resting-place* "No useless coffin enclosed his breast" ; it wrvs a simple soldier's funeral. The two boys took a last look, "and the little procession reformed run! marched back out of the cemetery. The band marched off to a livoly tuno. Then generals and the other officers, and the two sons of the dead warrior went back to their work, a littlo rnoro determined, perhaps, to fight on.