A Hard Case.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6268, 15 July 1890, Page 2

A Hard Case.

Colour-Sergeant Thomas Grady, V.O„ comes suddenly into the public view, and not, as might be expected, in some comfortable home or hospital of the country he served so well, but in an old brick-kiln at the foot of Victoria street, Collingwood, not in comfortable pensioner’s garb, with pipe in mouth, and foaming pot beside him and blazing fire at his toes, but crippled and hungry and ragged and destitute, creeping in to the miserable shelter of the old brickkiln. Colour-Sergeant Grady was once in the public view before; ha was not old or crippled then, though possibly ragged and dirty and very hungry. He stood with a mate in the broad gap made by battered down embrasures, and while shot -and shell shrieked and crashed and burst about them, these two filled sandbags, built up the walls, rendered the position tenable once more, and saved an important position for tho army, and his country. He was, says an old comrade (our correspondent, Mr Quin), immediately promoted, and recommended for the Victoria Cross, the decoration which carries the highest honour that England knows. Admiral Sir Stephen Lushington endorsing the recommendation of Gray's officers for tho V. 0., wrote: - “I feel sure that there is not in Her Majesty’s service a better soldier or a braver man, or one who has better deserved this great distinction.” We may well say there is [something wrong in the world when such services as these do not avail to save a man from such a winter of life. Five and thirty years ago a man whom his Queen delighted to honour; to-day a homeless, destitute cripple, with a paralysed wife, dependent on the charity of the home of St. Vincent de Paul. It ought not to be.—Melbourne Argus.