TOBOGGAN RUN TRAGEDY.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 214, 13 March 1907, Page 4

TOBOGGAN RUN TRAGEDY.

Captain Henry Singleton Pennell, I V.C., Staff-Captain of the Administrative .Staff of the Southern Command, died at St. Moritz from injuries sustained in an accident on the Cresta taboggan run. j Captain l'ennell, who was only j thirty-two years of age, had a brilliant career. He won the A r ictoria Cross at the storming of Gargai in the Tirah campaign as a lieutenant of the Notts and Derby Regiment. He made two heroic attempts to save Captain Smith of his regiment under a jnurderous fire, and only desisted from liis efforts when he found, that tho officer was dead. Captain Pennell was with his regiment in the heavy fighting in Natal before and after the relief of Ladysmith, and was wounded at Picter's Hill. During his Army service he received the medal and two clasjjs for the Tirah campaign, and the Queen's medal with five clasps for the Boor War, and was three times mentioned in despatches. He obtained his captaincy in 1900, passed the Staff College in 1903, and was appointed staff-captain in 1905. The Cresta run, where the accidenthappened, has a length of about threequarters of a mile, with several dangerous curves, where great banks of snow, sometimes supplemented by bundles of hay, keep the tobagganers on the track. Accidents aro so frequent that only one tobogganer at a time is allowed on the course. The speed attained in sonio places is seventy miles an hour. ' At ono point, known aa the Church Leap, the tobogganer flies through tho air, regaining the track lower down. Last February two competitors, Messrs Davies and Muir, were badly hurt-.