HEROES ALL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3280, 24 January 1917, Page 42

HEROES ALL.

STORIES FROM THE BATTLE FRONT. With millions of men engaged daily in the deadliest war known to history, it is but a commonplace to say that many, many acts of heroism have been performed which will never be recorded, for the simple reason that the officers who may have witnessed heroic deeds have themselves been fatally struck down shortly alter. When the annals of the war come to be written wiil a mure supreme action of devotion and self-sacrifice 1)0 mentoned than that of a member of the Otago section, whose nam,, is unknown to the returned officer who vouchsafes for the truthfulness of the story? In a billet in Armentiercs eight men were engaged cleaning bombs. It was a narrow passage way; the doors closed at each end, to keep out the rain. r lhe Otago man. working in the centre pi the passage accidentally dropped a bomb. The pin came out, and the bomb at once became -alive." J here was no place to throw the bomb, without seriously endangering the lives of his comrades. lhen an acl of magnificent courage and devotion was performed in cold blood—no shouts of brave fellow soldiers stirring the blood to deeds of valour and no chance of winning through. Rising to his feet the soldier I irmly clasped the bomb in both hands, held it to ins breast, and pressed boclv and bomb against the" wall. With Death" folded in his arms he awaited his doom, and immediately after was blown to bits. Not one of his comrades received a scratch. A Dunedin soldier, George Telford, on that fateful night when the Otago men. under Captain Jolly, met disaster, showed fine devotion. Captain Jolly. himself wounded, refused to be carried further oft the field of battle, got out of his stretcher and received another and fatal wound, lelford tound his officer hadlv wounded lying in No Man's Land. Ho lay down beside him and sheltered him with his body, and then, with a soldier named A. J. Aitken—Aitken

being also wounded—dragged and curried the injured officer to the trenches. The [nvercargill man who succumbed to a foolish i. mptation which caused him to commit a serious breach of discipline, for which he was under a penalty of a lengthy term of imprisonment, cleared his reputation and added lustre to the fame of his regiment by carrying in no fewer than 13 wounded men on that same night. Other stories arc told—they cannot, however, yet be made public. The double V.C. winner, Lieutenant Jacka,. was met in France. Ho is modesty personified—he has nothing to say of himself or his deeds. The trophies of war make a fine display for the cm-ions. They also make one realise the rerribleness of the war. The jagged pieces of iron from a 9.2 shell, the revolvers, the death-dealing bomb:-,, the German machine gun cartridges, the rifle grenades, the gas mask—they stand as a horrible illustration of the ingenuity of man to encompass the death of" his enemy. The German jamtin bombs screwed on to the end of a small length of wood, to add to the effectiveness of the throw—was left in the New Zealanders' trenches one night when the Huns had been driven back. It was completely filled with an explosive—it kills by concussion within a radius of a few feet.