BODY AS SHIELD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21816, 20 November 1940, Page 4

BODY AS SHIELD

CORPORAL SAVES OLD MAN FROM INJURY (From the Official War Correspondent attached to the New Zealand Forces in Great Britain.) OCTOBER 4, 1940. An old gentleman of 80 in this English town is sorely worried. He wishes to find a corporal of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and the more soldiers he asks the more confused his search seems to become. One particular coruoral is wanted, but the old gentleman has no very clear recollection of him: the circumstances of their only meeting were a little distracting. The New Zealander, one of very few in the town that morning—our billets are in the .villages and countryside around it—was talking in the street with another citizen when a bomb fell some 40 yards away. The old gentleman was then almost abreast of the talking couple. He stopped, startled, at the sound of the explosion; and simultaneously the soldier sprang towards him. “We were not affected by the blast,” said another bystander afterwards, “although we felt it; but the air was full of flying stuff—bits of brick and masonry, and I think street paving too. Your man—l have never seen anyone act quicker—seemed to throw himself between the old gentleman and the bomb. He held his arms up to make a shield, and bent over to give the other shelter from the flying debris. He was himself hit in the back by what appeared to be a chunk of brick. I saw that myself; but I am glad to say he was not hurt. Had that briCK struck an old man of 80, and in the face, as it almost certainly would have done but for the soldier’s prompt protection, he would undoubtedly have been hurt. He might easily have died of the shock.” This onlooker, although clear in his recollection of events, admits that he was a little unnerved at the time, and that before he could express his admiration or the old gentleman his thanks, the corporal had slipped away. He may never be found to receive thanks in person; but as a result of what he did in that split second after the burst of the bomb, there are several families in this neighbourhood—those of the sons and daughters of the old gentleman—who will do anything at all for New Zealand soldiers.