SOLDIERS' LETTERS.

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 2813, 13 September 1915, Page 4

SOLDIERS' LETTERS.

WILL SING THE DARDE-KNELL. Private J. Leo Maloney, of the 2nd Battalion, Ist Brigade, writes from the Ist Australian Stationary Hospital: 'In dock for repairs, and have beei\ for the past three weeks. A ruptured ear drum and concussion of the braan the cause, brought about by a bomb exploding within a foot or eighteen inches of my right ear. My lire was saved by a sandbag, which got the fragments of shell. I got the concussion, which was strong enough to shake tho earth. To-day is my first day out, so you can guess I'm not in too good form. 1 expect I shall be back in the trenches in a short while now. It will not take me long to pick up now that I'm again on the move. in 'I only heard yesterday of the Coalition Ministry in England, and the proposed svstom of compulsory registration. Why the deuce don't they bring about something of the kind in Australia? Men are wanted everywhere to make this the grandest possible victory. We shall sing the Darde'knell of the old Ottoman Empire before we leave thus quarter, and shall have a Turkish bath in Constantinople." • • "I can tell you H.B. should be proud of her boys, for they are unequalled (writes an old boy of Napier .High School, whose letter is published in the Scindian). We have had a fortnight of very ticklish work—the Turks oulv ten yards away m places, and not hesitating to keep us constantly aware of the fact with bombs and sniping. They have rather lost interest in both these pastimes lately, because we have been doing a dia-mond-cut-diamond stunt, and our diamond has been the harder. This has rather pleased the authorities. It's rum to sit and wonder if the T.T. is going to blow you down from abovo and up from beneath while he hits at you in front, and the intervening space is full of fragments of broken gear and people, mainly Turks. . . . Sleep is the thing that cometh seldom, but you get used to it after a time. Never did I get more than three hours at night and in the daytime the- flies discouraged any effort in that direction. At present I am the sole survivor of our original staff of officers, though I expect Jardine iii a day or so. My escapes have not been more miraculous than numerous. One other common disease here is ' periscopia,' or glass around the eyes from a broken periscope. We enjoy life—while we have it—because you really cannot say from ope moment to another whether you will be here or somewhere else."