A FINE MAN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17329, 18 November 1916, Page 4

A FINE MAN.

LI EU TENA NT-CX>L O N EL M’KENZIE, SALVATION ARMY’S HEROIC CHAPLAIN. The Following article, written by Mr F. A. M’Kenaie, is quoted from The Public Ledger,” published in Philadelphia, U.S.A.:— I have heard of Lieutenant-Colonel M’Kenzie, the Salvation Army chaplain in Gallipoli, from an Australian soldier, wounded at Anzac and returned to London. “ We had a Salvation Army chaplain with us,” said tho Australian, “and he was a big, burly beggar, I can tell you, without 1 a bit of nonsense in him. My! Soino of the stunts he did would make the hair stand on your bead. One day wo we.ro setting out for one of the worst bits of tho whole show. \\a had to storm the stiffest part of the Turkish front,' and wo knew very well that not many of us wero likely to come back. NOT AFRAID TO DIE! “ Captain Mao.” as we called him, declared he was coming with us. “Boys,” ho said, I've prayed with you and I’ve preached to you; and do yon think I am afraid to die with you? I’d bo ashamed of myself to funk it when you were up against it hard.' And lie came aloug with me, and not in tho hack line either. All ho had with him was a. small stick, and he camq out of the fight- without a. scratch. I do not belong to the Salvation Army, and I'm not likely to belong to it, hat I do know a man when T meet him. And he was a man! / The captain arrived in Egypt with tho first contingent of Australian troops, but when in due course they were sent on to the Dardanelles he did not> immediately follow". The Australians arrived in Gallipoli lato in April, and Chaplain-Captain M’Kenzio readied the front with the first brigade of the Australians the first week in May. At. tho spot where lie landed the lurkish trenches were within fifty yauls. There had not been as yet any chaplains there. ' He was sent for because the boys themselves were most anxious that ho should he with them. "hey knew him and liked him. The captain’s first work was to renduct the funeral service of the colonel of his battalion. In describing this event he wrote: “ T had to he down as I read the burial service, lor hundreds of bullets were whistling overhead. I thought I was. nearly outod on four separate occasions, twice with shells and twice with bullets.” Next day while he urns conducting a funeral service a shell fell and exploded just three feet from where Tie and twenty other men were standing. Shrapnel fell all around them, and into the grave, hut- by a miracle not one of them was hit. From a series of funerals under nre he went straight off for twenty-four hours with the men m the front trenches.- " T may or may not come out of this struggle alive, he wrote, “but whatever happens I am more than glad to bo with the men and preach Jesus to them and try to live as a militant Christian should. Earn supremely happy, and will die for my country ami in the interests of the men with readiness and without tear. Ho plunged into the new life with zeal.

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY BURIALS IN TEN DAIS. “Here we stow in our own gravy ho wrote at the titne. ‘Mo are 0 * dug in, sitting tight and in great form: indeed, ready for anything, y am as brown ns a Jan, my nose is skinned, my cars are blistered, and .1 would pass for a half-caste. I am rapidly developing the instincts or a troglodyte, as I live in a dug-out and sleep on the hillside, whore the shrapnel and bullets keep flying about. Hero ho was, always sleeping fully dressed, ready for every emergency; dirty, as everyone else was, tor ho could not be otherwise; thirsty, for although food was plentiful, water was very, very scarce; preaching, teaching, but, above all, living his faith. _ In ten days ho had read the burial service over 170 men. Then came armistice day, when each went out- to claim its own among the fallen in the No Man’s Land between the lines. MEETING UNDER FIRE. He established cordial relations even with some of the. Turks on that day. Ono Turkish doctor gave him his visifc- ■ ing card, and told him if ever he was taken a prisoner to show it and ho' would como to him. Ho held meetings constantly. Here is an account at the time or one of them. “We had a meeting on Sunday evening on the hillside just behind our trenches, 150yds from tho Turks’ trenches. We sat around on the ground, and had a very fine freo time. The men entered into the spirit of the meeting with remarkable earnestness, and sang the six devotional songs with deep religious fervour. A fierce cannonade was in progress from the naval guns, a’ stiff contest was taking place on our left about a mile distant, and the bullets were continually whizziug over our heads. “ W r e were 600 ft or so above the sea, which was a mile and a half below us, and away in the west the sun was setting in glorious, gorgeous splendour, throwing its scintillating light and shades over a blue sea of glassy smoothness. The lit-tlo birds were singing their good-night songs in the bushes close by, the wild flowers were blooming at our feet, and the new made graves contained the shattered bodies of the many heroes who moved’ and had their being among us but- a few short weeks ago, and who within these few weeks had given their promising young lives in the cause of righteousness and . freedom. These men • 1 sorely miss. »Mv soul was moved to an unwonted degree as my eye took in that kaleidoscopic picture. Truly ‘Man’s inhumanity to vnau makes countless thousands mourn.’ ”

September found him with the rest of the Australians at. Suvl.n Bay, and hero he had some of his hottest experiences. I n one of the. biggest charges, where he advanced with the troops, -his cap cover was pierced in three places, his hand was hit, and a spent bullet penetrated his right side. But these wounds did not. stop him. and ho reached the Turkish trenches with tho rest of his brigade. TOR.TUB TNG THIRST.

For twenty-four hours together ho searched through these trenches piled with dead and dying and badly wounded to find his own Australian comrades. Some of them had lain wounded there amid the’terrible beat and torturing thirst lor twenty hours and more. For forty-eight hours, he and his follow chaplains worked without any cessation, the most awful forty-eight hours they had ever lived, and for five days ho kopt going with brief snatches of rest, 'Besides helping with the

wounded ho had to conduct burial services over hundreds of men during these days, parties of men being buried iii great groups. While conducting a burial of fifteen a bullet whizzed by within half an inch of his right oar while be was praying, and killed a man standing by bis side. Tho captain had been with his regiment in the trenches for twenty weeks without a break, and the great fight came immediately on top of that. Tho regiment itself had been reduced to 180 effective men. Even his own iron frame almost broke down under the strain; the want of sleep, tho want) of food, still’ worse, tho want of water and tho sight of tho agony which ho could do so little to appease. Ho became a victim of neuritis, tho most painful of all nervous diseases, and suffered agony with his back and legs. But he kept on and on and on. A FUTILE FIGHT. Winter arrived and. brought some relief from tho summer torment). Thj> chaplain had lost all his possessions and all his winter clothes, stolen by strangers on shipboard, but he found opportunity to secure fresh supplies and returned after a rest to the trenches with, as ho said himself, “warm clothes, empty pockets, a vigorous body, and a. mind to work.” We set about making his winter dugoufc, and had anyone gone to see him at that time in his little homo dug in the hillside, they would have found him sibting on an old biscuit tin with a box for a tablo and a rush lamp for a light—a treacle tin -with bacon fat and a thick piece of string for a wick. A fall of snow created .a diversion for these hardy Auzacs. Thousands, of them bad never gazed upon swob a sight, but all tho same they were soon in the midst of a snowball fight. Ca]>tain Mac looked over tho field. How many of bis old friends had gone! How futile it all seemed!

Directly following the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula. LieutenantColonel M’Kenzio accompanied his battalion to the western front where he is still doing splendid servieo with Hie men.