THE BRAVEST MAN.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13912, 20 January 1914, Page 2

THE BRAVEST MAN.

"Anybody can hs brave in company," said an old war correspondent, (writes a correspondent of the Sydney "Daily Telegraph) in a talk after dinner, "and courage is easy to display in broad daylight. The greatest test of nerves that 1 know is to bo on sentry duty at night when the enemy is close at hand, and might at any time show up. To be under fire in the daytime with the chance- of being finished suddenly with a bullet which comes from. unknown rifle, is nothing to it, and even waiting for a bayonet charge vhen your ammunition belt is empty is sport to sentry-go in the darkness, with the knowledge that a man might pounce upon you at any moment." Tho talk fell to the bravest men known by members of the company. "The bravest man I have known,1' said a colonel, who fought in the South African War, "was a big ilabby, and as far as I lenew him, a distinctly lazy army surgeon. He c-ame to u;> late in the Avar, and-he had the V.C., and seemed sneb an milike'y man to possess it, 1 made inquiries about how it was won. He was under fire at one of the early fights against .the Boers, and found a man who had been shotthrough an artery in the thigh. Be took hold of the wound with his hand temporarily to stop the- bleeding, ami immediately afterwards the1 firing became so hot that all his own fellows retired and left him there in the open, lying beside the wounded man. For five hours he hung on to that artery under a very, hot sun, and in an exposed position. The enemy found hint, and evidently thought ho was merely keeping quiet, for while he lay tb-ere he was shot five times. When his men got him he was just about finished from loss of blood. Both of them recovered, and the doctor, when some of them tried to talk to him about, it, said that, being a lazy man and fond of warmth, he found it quite to his liking lying there in the sun."