PECULIARITIES OF WARFARE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2811, 26 August 1908, Page 80

PECULIARITIES OF WARFARE.

It is one of %m peculiarities of warfare that occasionally the veriest trifle will kjll soni© men, whilst others have survived for weeks — often, irwleed, for years, under conditions which all medical science would lead' one to Believe impossible. » Of 'bullets in the brain, a type of wound ■usually . identified with immediate , dissolution, there- have been some extraordinary instances. During the Indian Mutiny, for example, a loyal native was struck bj a bullet upon the forehead, just above Ihe left eye. The bullet wedged its way into the bone, the skin eventually hea'ad over the wound, and the man resinned work as before. Twelve months later, however, he euddienly fell .down in convulsions, and died within a couple of minute® of his seizure. Tiie post-mortem examination revealed a truly remarkable state of things, the un fortunate man having lived all this time with quite two-thirds of the bullet embedded in his brain, an injury which would undoubtedly have killed 999 men out of every 1000. — Iron in His Skull. — Nor can this remarkable occurrence be teimed absolutely unique, for a certain officer, during! one of Britain's " little wars," met with a similar mishap with results perhaps even more surprising. He had the misfortune to burst the breech end of a- .gun he was handling, with the result that a large piece of iron was driven into his forehead?. The surgeonat first declined to extract this huge piece of iron, deeming that, as in any case the wound must quickly prove fatal, it would be a mistaken kindness to unnecessarily distress the poor fellow's last hours. Wonderful to relate, however, the "poor fellow- " not only recovered from the wound, but actually lived for 10 years with the piece of iron embedded in his skull. Eventually he succumbed to it, and' in a. most curious way. He was returning to England on furlough, when, as the Tesult of a drunken frolic, he undertook to shout louder than an unfortunate brother officer, who was being invalided home for consumption. Immediately after the contest he complained of severe pain in the head, and had to retire to his berth, where he expired a few days later of brain fever. A subsequent examination of his skull revealed the fact that, in some remarkable manner, the iron had worked its way througu the bone until only the thinnest possible layer of skin separated it from the brain. The immediate result of the shouting was to burst the frail protection which for 10 years had stood between him and death. Of cases in which" shots have passed clean through men without seriously affecting their subsequent health there' have been many scores. — A Bugler's Adventure.—In the first South African campaign a bugler boy got a pair of wounds which are probably unique in their way. It was a case of one of those "long pots" for which the Boers are so justly famous. The bugler, boylik.e, had been sitting upon a pile of biscuit boxes whilst he calmly sucked an orange, jt which he had somehow or other managed to gain pJQepess^. All of a sudden the poor little fellow gave vsht \o a terrific yell, tumbled Jiead 1 over heels from his vantage point, and rolled over and over from the zvguod,

whilst a little whiff of faint blue smoke hung for a moment above a, projecting ledge of rock some; 1500 yards away, and then dissolved into , the arid .veldt air. The little bugler boy had been "sniped.'-' They carried him '-to the hospital tent, where a. doctor immediately got to work upon him. The astonishment of . the doctor may be imagined when, uponspong-. ing the fast-flowing blood from, his pale little face, he discovered that beyond puncturing the centre of' each cheek and passing through the orange en route the ball had done him absolutely no harm whatever. It subsequently transpired that he had been struck just when his jaws «v.-ie ex-tended-to their fullest extent in a vainglorious attempt to put the entire orange between them at one operation. The bullet had consequently missed his teeth, and its only subsequent result was to leave an attractive little- dimple upon each cheek, of which doubtless his mother was very proud. •.-* '-' _-- J v — Other Narrow Escapes. — Of narrow squeaks on the battlefield there have, of course; been many extra--ordinary instances ; but few more so than a certain cavalry office^&r He was standing in his stirrups in order to get a better view of an enemy's position, when a grape shot carried away the entire back of_the saddle upon which he had been sitting" but a moment before. Neither horse nor man was hurt-. Another officer, who received a bullet in the lung during the Mutiny, h«s kept it there to this day. Beyond a little occasional blood spitting he suffers absolutely no inconvenience from his uninvited guest. At Maiwand an artilleryman had a most wonderful escape. He was leaning into a- large bin full of* cartridges, 'when, like a bolt from the blue/a f spent ball dropped upon the lid of the box. Owing, however, to the slant of the massive lid the ball rolled off on to the ground, and the man escaped with a bruised head and a severe fright. Needless to say, had the ball dropped upon the flat lid, it -would have crushed through it and blown both the man and the whole of his gun crew to pieces.