A WORD FOR THE ALSATIAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1933, Page 13

A WORD FOR THE ALSATIAN.

!2 D It is the fashion just now to toll as many stories as possible against the , s Alsatian dog. So why should not some stories bo told in hie favour? My story „ concerns the first one of the breed I 3 ever saw, in France, September, 1916. n ' Following a night attack by the 2nd n Canterbury Battalion, in which one d section of trench changed hands four times, the adjutant was. missing in the morning. Then "Mr. Alsatian." appeared; running backwards and forwards from »r one to another evidently trying ° desperately to make something known, S but when spoken to in .English, he became too bewildered to understand. ® At length, late in the afternoon, one of •" our scouts came along, who showed the 3 dog something German. Immediately r the dog set straight out for a big shell hole. The scout followed, and found the * adjutant, terribly wounded. The .rest of the story is a terrible indictment of l " what war does to the minds of men. In the early morning two Germans found themselves in the shell hole with * the adjutant. They tore up their shirts ' to bind his wounds. One of them got e up out of the liolo to obtain help. He was shot dead on sight. And no one y thought anything more about it, until J the scout followed the Alsatian at about f 4.30 p.m. The other German had been j too frightened to follow his mate; and . he was found nursing the adjutant in f his lap. I have good reason to rememI ber this story, as the last thing I did at [ the front was to send through a message to headquarters reporting the adjutant's rescue. The next minute I got my "blighty." Yet if it had not ? been for the persistence of that Alsatian ? dog, the adjutant would probably never have been rescued. 4/583.