CRIPPLES HEROIC DEATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16121, 8 January 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

CRIPPLES HEROIC DEATH.

AX EXAMPLE TO SHIRKERS.

Here is an object-lesson for the shirkers I —the story of a London ex-cripple who ! was helped by the Ragged School Union | to conquer his affliction, and who, when | the war broke out tried and tried again j to enlist, and succeeded at the seventh ! ; attempt. Now he has met his death while j ■ acting as a bomb-thrower in the trenches. | j Harry Dale, aged twenty-two, in his I last letter to his mother three days before j his death, wrote: "I have been chosen j for bomb-throwing. Please do not worry j : for me. Try to think that whatever happens it is only bringing the end nearer. Take care of yourselves, and, if I can, I j will try. and come back "someone to bo proud of.' " I Accoiding to one of his chums, they ' had just taken a German trench, and were getting back to their own again, when, j most of the men having jumped the parapet to safety, Harry was picked off by a sniper. Thus died a plucky lad who, when he was first visited by one of the Union's Cripple Mission visitors, had spent nine months on his back, and had been treated j in St. Thomas' Hospital for hip disease. I Subsequently he spent six months in a I I sanatorium for consumption. With but . | little education, the lad started work, and j was again and again brought down by ! , asthma and lung trouble. ' But he was ! j only "baffled to fight better." i I When the war broke out "he determined j to enlist, like other fellows, and it was only on his seventh application, on May ■ jlO last, that he was accepted. Within j • eleven weeks he was at the front, and on i i September 25 laid down his life. Since he first went to the (ripple Par- i I lour in South T/ondon a doze i venrs ago' i he had kept in touch with the society by visits and correspondence. — i