"OLD CONTEMPTIBLES"

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 52, Issue 248, 2 August 1932, Page 2

"OLD CONTEMPTIBLES"

TRIBUTE FROM THE FRENCH. ADMIRAL'S REMINISCENCES. Admiral Mark Kerr, speaking recently in London at the annual dinner of the Cricklewood branch of the Old Contemptibles' Association, recalled a notable French compliment paid to the original British Expeditionary Force. It was, said the Admiral, a French general who made the remark: "There is only one army in this war„ and that is the British Army. The rest of us are amateurs." He was talking of the Old Contemptibles, and that was the greatest compliment ever paid to them.

Admiral Kerr also recalled a story Of the retreat from Mons. General Smith Dorrien, he said, received renewed orders to retire, but when Sir Henry Wilson spoke to him he received the reply: "I can't; we are going to stand where we are and hold the enemy up." Sir Henry's comment was "Yours is the first cheerful voice I have heard for three days." Yet another story told by the speaker was that of a British submarine which was resting at the bottom of tho sea when an officer, for personal reasons, required to go to the surface. The submarine rose to find near by the German cruiser Hela which the British vessel torpedoed. "Never," said Admiral Kerr, "was a German ship so romantically sunk." Speaking of the Air Force, Admiral Kerr said there was a British airman who got into trouble with 14 German aeroplanes, fired off all his ammunition, and finallv threw his Verey pistol at the last enemy airman. After he had landed, a German machine flew oyer him and something whizzed past. He discovered it was he Verey pistol, with a note attached, which read: As Avar reprisals are the order of the day, I return your pistol the same way that I received it." "That showed the chivalry of the enemy," said Admiral Kerr. "He could have'killed him, but he had a good joke and all honour to him. In spite of all the bad things during the war, many acts of chivalry were shown toward us by the enemy. All the tales of wickedness you have been told about the enemy are not true." Field-Marshal Sir George Milne, president of the Old Contemptibles' Association, said that, like the army of 1914, the British Army of to-day, though possibly the smallest, was the best trained, disciplined and equipped, and the best spirited in the world."