V.C. WINNERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4534, 9 February 1942, Page 3

V.C. WINNERS

NEW ZEALANDERS PRAISED “ In the Bagdad of the Arabian Nights it used to be ordered that the story of any notable achievement should be written down in letters of gold. Is gold good enough, we can but ask, for the achievemfents of the two New Zealanders who have been awarded the Victoria Cross for valour ? “ The story of Second-Lieutenant Upham covers nine days. During the whole time he was suffering from dysentery and could eat very little. The ordinary mortal, who knows to his shame haw a little indigestion can upset both his eye and his nerve on the golf course, will feel that on the least eventful of those nine days Mr Upham’s courage was superhuman. Courage, moreover, in this case meant something far more complex and intellectual than vyas demanded, say, of even the officers in the Charge of

the Light Brigade. All the time, and not only on the fifth of those nine days, when, painfully wounded, bruised, and starved, he bagged his brace by shamming dead, or on the last day, when, by exposing himself, he tricked the enemy into doing the like, he was thinking, planning, pitting his wits. against the German strength. “ We all like to think that in the excitement of battle we should be able to do deeds of which the mere thought turns us cold in repose; but the story of those nine days includes not only the hour after hour- of silent endurance through which discipline helps to fortify the least heroic, but also the deliberate courting of danger in cold biood for the sake of the platoon, of the Army, of New Zealand, of the British Empire and the free world. “ And Sergeant Huhne, that deadly stalker of snipers—he, too, has won his V.C. as much by his brains as by his contempt for danger.”—The London Times.