VICTIM OF WAR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21154, 29 September 1938, Page 10

VICTIM OF WAR

AN AUSTRALIAN HERO LONDON, September 1. The Great War of 1914-18 claimed • another victim this week, when an Australian ex-soldier died in k England from the after-effects of his wounds. His death ended a 23-year-old romance which the war began. On May 29. 1915. Second-Lieutenant Maurice Little, 15th Battalion. Aus- ’ tralian and Imperial Forces, jumped from the first boat landing troops at Gallipoli. A shell burst, and the first casualty among 60.000 men fell to the ground. Stretcher-bearers found him blinded, his right hand tom off. his right knee useless. He had 16 other wounds. A miracle saved his life and gave him happiness. Bessie Crowther, nurse at> the hospital base at Old Cairo, to which Lieutenant Little was carried, married him two months after she had first changed his bandages. This week she followed his coffin in St. John’s Church, Tunbridge Wells, where they worshipped when they lived in that town. After she had seen her husband for the last time, Mrs Little said:—“l loved him from the first moment I saw him. No life ever lived was finer than ills. He never complained, and he never ceased to take an interest in others He taught himseif to type, with one liand, had a wide knowledge of affairs, and was the friend of all who knew him. Life will be very empty for me now.”