"SEND REAL SOLDIERS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 123, 27 May 1930, Page 11

"SEND REAL SOLDIERS."

- a WISH THAT CAME TRUE. TRIBUTE TO NEW ZEALANDERS. An unstudied but splendid tribute to the New Zealand' Division crops up in a book recently published, in a story told by Private R. G. Bultitude, a ranker in the Artists' Rifles. He tells how hie battalion, and, in fact, the whole fourteen divisions of General Gough's Fifth Army, had been overwhelmed on March 21, 1918, by the might of the German military machine; and how, although they turned at bay time and again in the days that followed, they were bombarded or gassed or machine-gunned out of position after position from St. Quentin to Albert.

In the end the shattered Artiste' Rifles were lying out before Albert, halfstarved, demoralised and utterly weary. As it is set down in the book, it was then in desperation that Private Bultitude wished his big wish:— "Send up immediately large reinforcements of fresh troops—not ragged scarecrows like ourselves, mind, but real live soldiers, and let them be colonials. "No magic button was needed. Up they came, rank after rank, clean, shaved, in spick and span uniforms, properly armed. The awed exclamation of one of my shell-hole companions seemed to sum up our feelings to a nicety: '"New Zealanders! Well, Gawd help Jerry.'"