MEN OF MAORILAND.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14286, 1 May 1917, Page 3

MEN OF MAORILAND.

HOW THEY LIVED AND HOW THEY DIED. " "

Colonel Hughes, D.S p., ., of the Canterbury Battalion, who served four months m Egypt and five at Qallipoli and was six months v iri hospital as the result of it. paid a high tribute, at the Anzac dinner at Wellington on Saturday, to the prowess arid good conduct oi the men of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces. , ««l would like to tell you, he said, "what our men were like —how they lived and how they died*. We know that they could fight, but we did ncft expeat them to live all the time they were away in such a way that they were a credit to you all over the world." (Applause.) Commander Keily, of the hoyal Naval Reserve, had just been telling him of h6\v well he found the New Zealanders spoken of wherever he had been. At Colombo on their return he (Uolpiiel Hughes) was in charge, of -280 to 29<Mn'en. They were entertained by the leading citizen's of that city, and their wives andi daughters waited on them— he was "d— proud of it." (Applause and laughter.) The Mayor of Albany also spoke most? highly of their behaViour. On the .Rhododendron Ridge, now called in their honor "the Canterbury Ridge," some 300 of his men were. hit in twenty minutes in a space not much bigger than the floor of the Town Hall, and he never heard a sound from one- of them A boy, just a few feet from him now. without a leg, was badly hit, but when asked how he >was he said, "Firij;all right sir." And that was the same with all the New Zealanders. They never heard a sound' from them. They should be proud to think of their brave boys. (Applause.) A voice:, "We are projid of you, Jack." (Loud applause.) At Quinn's Post the boys used to sing to pass the time. And they could sing, too. They would have made a good programme for the "hallsi" those hoys: (Applause.) Qne, .Corporal Wilson, used' to sing that glorious song, "The Trumpeter." ,(Applause.) As .it happened, a bugler .qi the First Canterburys was missing. UTheyrdid . not", know where h© was. But above them at Quinn's Post was "dead ground".; nobody could cross a ridge-as-hidi'ithpmjihfein;'aa, say, the roof of i,he' Town Hall ; and one day Sergeant McLaggen, afterwards badly wounded, on© of their best non-comsl. went up. the ridge, l ariU. there he found the bugler. They had been there a week, living and. singing a few. feet of him, and had not known it.