VICTIM OF WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23150, 23 September 1938, Page 8

VICTIM OF WAR

AN AUSTRALIAN HEBO DEATH IN ENGLAND HOSPITAL BASE ROMANCE [FROM A SPECIAX CORRESPONDENT] LONDON, Sept. 1 The Great War of 1914-18 claimed another victim this week, when an Australian ex-soldier died in Krjgl from the after-effects of his wounds His death ended a 23-year-old romance which the war began. On May Maurice Little, loth Battalion, Australian and Imperial Forces, jumped from the first boat landing troops at Gallipoli. A shell burst, and the first casualty among 60,000 men fell to the ground. Stretcher-bearers found him blinded, his right hand torn off, hit right knee useless. He had 16 other wounds. A miracle saved his life and gave him happiness. Bessie Crowther, nurse at the hospital base at Old Cairo to which Lieutenant Little was carried married him two months after she had first changed his bandages. This week she followed his coffin in St. John's Church, Tunbridge Wells where they worshipped tvhen they lived in that town. After she had seen her husband for the last time, Mrs. Little said:—"! loved him from the first moment I saw him. No life ever lived was finer than his. He never complained, and he never ceased to talc* an interest in others. Ho taught himself to type, with one hand had a wide knowledge of affairs, and was the friend of:all who knew him. Life will be very empty for me now."