CHIVALRY.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15488, 15 January 1916, Page 7

CHIVALRY.

AN ANZAC INCIDENT,

FOES' MISSION OF MERCY,

LONDON, November 26. An officer of the R.N. V.Br. in Gallipoli writes:— Late one afternoon upon-the. extreme right oil. our lino a man was seen in the Turkish zone moving furtively through the scrub behind the beach, and about half a mile distant, and making for the narrow gap which separated the end of our trenches from the blue waters of the iEgeau Sea. From the tall summit of the Lonesome Pino Plat-eau the Australian watchers looked on with interest, wondering what his purpose might be. Suddenly a rifle shot rang out—a Turkish rifle shot—and the man fell wounded. There he lay; in the open beside the beach and bound up his wound and nursed his pains, a pathetic fig'iie— a piece .of human wreckage cast up by the storm and wrath, not of God but of man.

On one side lay the arnir of his friends from which he was an outcast; on the other his foe. determined. chivalrous, but not implacable ; while beneath him murmured the army jf Allah—the heedless, careless sea. To which of these should ho turn for help in his extremity Surely to the forces of neutral Nature. In the liquid depths of the broad his 1 pains would find release—his mind peace! Slowly he dragged himself, in spite of a shattered limb, towards the waterside, while the red sun' dropped above Imbros, that hap]Xjr western isle whose hills seemed to east their shadows ever nearer. A SOUL IN PAIN 1 . Night fell, and in the faint stnrlight the watchers upon Lonesome Pine looked at one another questioningly. Little they said, yet the same thought was uppermost in the mind of each. Something must be done. There was a call for volunteers, and a few minutes later a party- of gallant men from the backblocks were threading their way along the shore through the darkness and silence, broken only by the music of waves and the cry of a soul in pain. They came upon the obiect of their quest just at the very margin of sand and sea, and were raising him up. when through the shadow there loomed suddenly another band, a Turkish patrol bent 011 the same .quest. .Shots were exchanged, and the newcomers, who found themselves at a disadvantage numerically, were at once supplied with a wounded man from among themselves to take back to the Turkish camo in place of the one thev had missed by a few minutes only, while the other party, both rescuers and. rescued.- had soon reached the Anzac lines in safety • What led these men to hazard their lives in so perilous an exploit, braving certain dange* to save an unknown foe? I believe the old Philosopher Epictetus once supDlied the answer under somewhat similar circumstances. "They have done this," he exclaimed, "not for the man, but for the nature of man."