PIRATES BY NIGH£-WOUNDED SOLDIERS' ORDEAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17075, 31 August 1917, Page 3

PIRATES BY NIGH£-WOUNDED SOLDIERS' ORDEAL

(The following account of the landing of wounded soldiers a-ter an attack on a hospital ship comes from a trust-

worthy source.)

One-thirty o'clock on a belated winter's morning. Colder and more wretched than it had been at midnight. The waters of the harbour were being whipped to frenzy in the darkness by a viciously driving, sleety rain. A good time enojigh for those in warm beds, but no sort of a night for seafaring, or for lying out on the plains of Pioardy, say, trying to get shelter out of a waiter-logged, shrapnel-sprayed shell crater. Suddenly, the line of watchers at the quay-head, their coats all gleaming, jumped into life and animation; for from around the end of the long jetty appeared a mast-head light. >l Hero they are at last! How cold and wet they'll be!"

A second light followed the first, and, handled as though they Were rubbertyred perambulators on a footpath, two of his Majesty's destroyers were laid gontly alongside the stage, their sides just kissing the great rope fenders. The whole operation had been performed in perfect silence; but in that dramatic instant of so-.::idless contact with the wharf-side fenders, a full-throated .shout rent the rain-swept air from the deck of the first destroyer:— "Three cheers for the Hummingbird and the Whipsnake!" I

For a full minute tha thunder of cheering rolled out into the night; a very moving sound, compact of vivid and varied emotions, and contributed to by men whoa day or two earlier had been fighting under the scream of our own and eneuvy shells, and forcing their way through knee-deep mud and tangles of German barbed wire in the inferno between Vimy Ridcce a"'l \v

There they had been wounded, and passed out for rest, and treatment in Blighty. But since then, all unarmed and helpless, they had been suddenly cajled on to face the Boche again, and ill his vile-t -and most murderous guise. Yes, the sum of the cheering was moving ; its component parts singularly varied. For. a full minute the cheering rose and fell athwart the driving rain, and then the Hummingbird made answer with one long fierce blast from her siren; full of defiance, and somehow, as it seemed to our ears, of good British cheer.

Then they began +o come ashore; a long, stiffly-moving file of shaky, utterly weary souls, wrapped about ago their Lends or arms, necks or shoulders, with rain-and-brine-soaked surgical bandages. Few had had any sleep for several nights; all were new-plucked from the midmost jaws of death among the shell-holes; and —all had faced Boche again, at liis ugliest, since leaving France. The fatigue in their,eyes, which no man rn.iy hide <h sucth ;i c...st\ was pathetic, but there was a look in the same eyes that overrode anything like pathos; the look indomitable. Some of the greyness began to fade out from their faces now, as warmed and cheered and comforted, they climbed into the waiting train, filling coach after coach,

■1 "•■•(■n'>3s-succession. ■. As they sank into their seats, one heard short, hard sighs o relief pass'their tight-closed lips. But for talk, there was mighty little of that, and misht.hnye been none if one had put no'questions.

' WITHIN SIGHT OF BLIGHTY

"Yes, we-were within sight of Blighty when the torpedo got /us" —it was a long, lean Northcountryman who spoke —but it just caught our stern, and blew it clean away—a few men with it, too. Another four seconds and that would have been a wasted torpedo." An exceptionally small, earnest-faced man in the corner looked up. "Yes," he said, quickly and quietly, "and I suppose a few .Bodies might have been saved for a, bit from ear ling—hell!".

"Eh? Well, I don't know about that," resumed the North-countryman, in an open-minded, matter-of-fact way, r u s if he had regarded this as & question for the decision of some superior officer, possibly his commanding officer. "But it was .wonderful to see the two destroyers. They are men, those sailors. They had their boats in the water almost before you could tarn round. One of them came close in alongside of us, and the other went circling round and round us, like a sheep-dog; but angry. Man, lint that destroyer did look angry. We floated just over a quarter of an hour, and we were very nearly all clear of her, when she gave one hist, and went down like a plummet. That last few minutes wasn't nice, you know —like waiting to go over the mrapet. C -ne of us jumped to the deck of the destroyer, and same got knocked r.bout a bit; wounded men, ye see; nofrso handy as they might be other times. The destroyer came right in under us at last, to get the last of us, and only drew away as the suction began. There wasn't any muddle or panic, you know; no inore'n on a job o' work at the front. I don't suppose we minded -as much as civvies would. The army .does teach you how to keep your head;.and, anyhow, we'd been getting it in the nock this- lons time from shells, and Emma Gees, an', bombs, an' (''fit. Thi-: was only a r -'<ti4- "'* 1-st n't. If it came out there, you'd think nothing of it; but on the way here T suppose a man begins to lay off a bit, as ye might say, an' get a bit slacker."

A handful of lint is given to one man with «i bandaged arm and a nasty cut on the forehead, which was still bleeding. "I only just found oiyt I had that" ho said. "I did feel r. bit of a bump there when I was getting down the side, hut forgot it after. Of course, we coulci see she was done for, and everybody kept quiet. It war, lucky the rain was so heavy,- they say, because it beat the sea down a bit, and made it smoother. It was perishing cold; but I'm feeling fine now. I got twenty-eight Bodies to my own rifle, out there by Blagny, and I wish it had been a hundred. Wa picked 'em off as they ran like rabbit?.. Between ns here, I reckon we must have got a regiment of 'em, so no wonder they wanted to get us to-night, it seems a dirty way to do it, with a hospital ship. But there—you know what the Bodies are. A cbap on the destroyer—they're men those destroyer chaps, all right—he told me a thing or two about what happens to iiio^e U-boats, and it sounded pretty good, I can tell you . I suppose the Bodies can't help bein' Bodies—the silly blighters!"

One went the length of the long train. The silent calm of it all seemed almost unnatural; fatigue of body r-.nd mind. The whole thng wns ncceptc- 7. as part of the day's work; and, after all, "We're in Blighty, you know, an' don't yon forget it," said one man. "It's rather like something voiv've seen in the pictures," said another. As the tvnin willed slowly, smootblv o^.fc from the stage, the rescued men offered up their tVpnks ngnin, the nnly -svay they knew, with a. long, nmivering cheer.

" Are top down-henrted?" called an orderly. "With i Ion?. rumMinp- roarer a "No !" thp.v disappeared into the night, n j, f i—England.

"Nice chip. Fritz." s^id1 a destroyer officer, as he turned away.