ONE AGAINST HUNDRED

Otago Witness, Issue 3397, 23 April 1919, Page 46

ONE AGAINST HUNDRED

RECKLESS COURAGE OF WEST AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER,

"I have never seen such reckless courage and suck amazing results, even in the A.1.F." Such, is Chaplain O'Callaghan s estimate of the deed which won for Lieutenant L. D. M'Carthy, of West Australia, the Victoria Cross. "I do not believe it was ever so well earned sine© its history began," he writes to a friend in Perth. "Fritz dominated our flank, and would have been very dangerous if not ousted. Lieutenant M'Carthy, who commanded the company on the extreme left of the brigade, went out to reconnoitre at 7 a.m., and saw that Fritz was there in strength. Although his force was but nine, M'Carthy daringly, gave battle and fought the enemy for two hours. "After his victory I was speaking to M'Carthy, and his account "was interesting. In the first half-hour he lost all his men, and there were three machine guns playing around him. He got into a shell-hole and dug a passage to the trench. He crept up to the first gun and shot the gunner dead before he had finished wondering when the Australian would show himself again. M'Carthy then picked up German bourna which were lying about, and was lucky enough to get in first. ~,-'-. iT _ "He spent an hour and a-half doing these few things, and lost all his men, but the main body of Germans was ahead with rifles and bombs, while M'Carthy had only one shot in his revolver. To go back meant instant death; to go forward would have a certain moral effect from its very daring, besides which Fritz must be thinking that the force attacking was not limited to one man M'Carthy, therefore, pushed ahead into the trench, and 20 Germans put up their hands. An officer suddenly appeared from a dug-out and fired point blank, but missed M'Carthy. who gave him his last; bullet and killed him. Another officer fired, and he was put out of action with an enemy bomb, which was on the side of the trench. Then the funny part came. The enemy closed in on the audacious Australian, and took the bombs from him and prevented him from doing further slaughter. If they had only known it, he was their • prisoner. He kept shouting to his imaginary force, 'Come up.' He disarmed them all, and had them as meek as lambs by the time some of his battalion had come up. "Then the Germans must have felt fooled. They had held the ground against the English Fusiliers, and yet a solitary Australian was responsible for 100 prisoners and casualties."