MEN OF THE MAIN BODY

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144854, 4 December 1915, Page 5

MEN OF THE MAIN BODY

“WEARY BUT INDOMITABLE.” SOLDIER'S CALL FOR HELP. “We exported to find hardly any but white-haired men in the was a remark made by a soldier who ( returned by tho Willochra. His in- . quiry why there were thousands of I young men waiting to cheer tho return- j ing men formed the subject of a. paragraph in the Auckland Herald, which eventually came under the notice of Driver Harold Xladcliffe, Now Zealand Field Artillery, in Gallipoli. He has sent back the clipping from tho newspaper in a letter containing an endorsement of the wounded man’s surprise. He sat in his dug-out, writing an appeal to his friends for “mon and still more men,” with an aeroplane overhead making an “awful noise,” though things generally were very quiet. Driver Radclilfe went to tho front with the main force, and was fur a time in charge of the horses in Egypt. Ho returned to tho peninsula some months ago. and, with the picture of the cheering crowds in Wellington and Auckland before him, wrote of . tho men who had been through all the fighting. “I don't know how any young man with vigour in him and able to get awav, can stand thoso continuous jars,” ho wrote. “It would drive me mad. There are some I snow without a tic, and fellows that I thought had plenty of pluck in them, and still they hang back. Every man is wanted. .If some of them who are hanging back could have seen our main body of infantry, ns I did, after they bad been in the trenches, since April “5, looked at their faces and frames and then hung hack, I they deserve shooting. Ibe poor chaps I were just frames, their blood out of 1 order, their looks tired and hopeless, but as indomitable as ever. It made me feel sad, but flush with pride to hink, I was one of them. They are now all awav, having a well-earned rest —I take off'my hat to them. But the other sort—they beat me.”