KILLED IN BILLET

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 105, 30 October 1940, Page 8

KILLED IN BILLET

NEW ZEALANDER IN ENGLAND

TWO OTHERS WOUNDED

(From the Official War Correspondent

in Britain.) LOND9N, October 28. One soldier was killed in his billet and two others in the same room were wounded when an enemy aeroplane, turned from its course by anti-aircraft fire, jettisoned its bombs over southeastern England. The men were just going to bed hi the loft of a brick farm building when a bomb fell eight to ten yards from the foot of a wall against which, on the other side, their blankets were spread. It burst upj wards and outwards and fragments tore j their way through the double-brick I wall. The casualties were:— Killed. Private I. S. G. Holms, Waipukurau. Slightly Wounded. Private J. Armstrong. Private G. E. Boyle. This is the first death from enemy action of a New Zealand soldier while on duty in England, although the second from enemy action while on active service in England, Corporal J. W. Brown (Wellington) having been killed by a bomb while on leave in London last week. His body has been brought back for burial.

In this area recently also two men lost their lives through shooting accidents and another (making four in a month from this cause) through being run down on the road by a motor vehicle in the blackout. In all cases the relatives have been officially advised.

Soldiers dying on active service, from whatever cause, are given military funerals and their graves are marked by standard military headstones.