LOST HIS TROUSERS.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3939, 3 July 1918, Page 2

LOST HIS TROUSERS.

BUT WON MILITARY MEDAL,

Sapper Walter K. Stone, writing to his brother at Camden, New South Wales, gives an interesting account of a little episode in France. He writes : "Of course, it was not altogether modesty on my part that you were not told earlier that I had won the ■Military Medal. /When the card of congratulations was presented to me on parade, I did not know that the M.M. was to follow, and so said nothing about it till the award was gazetted.

"Of course, getting the M.M., or any other distinction, is very much a matter of luck, for many daring and brave things are done over here, especially amongst the privates, that go unrewarded because they do not happen to be observed by a superior officer. Lest you might imagine mine was awarded for some conspicuous achievement, I'll tell you what it was for. The card of congratulation reads : 'For devotion to duty at Messines, from June 7 to 12/ but thetparticulars are as follows : During' the big push at Messines, while Fritz was making things lively, another chap and I were sent out to restore a line of communication that had been smashed up by the German fire H

"We could only move between the flaves that were being constantly sent up, and during the three hours we were on the job, in a whirlwind of exciting moments, the one I remembered most afterwards was when I was detained by the trousers on some barbed wire, and the flares made me a- lovely target for Fritz. However, he missed me somehow, and before his flares made daylight again I was in a shellhole, without me blooming trousers. However, we fixed up our job and restored the communications, and got back, to be told that under the conditions we found, we would have been justified in returning without attempting what we did, and I suppose that fact influenced the authorities in granting us both the M.M."