KING OF NO MAN'S LAND

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1918, Page 2

KING OF NO MAN'S LAND

A NEW ZEALAND RAIDER

SERGEANT RICHARD CHARLES TRAVIS, D.C.M., M.M.

KILLED AT THE FRONT.

(From Malcolm Ross, War Correspondent, with the New Zealand Forces in the Field.) HEADQUARTERS, 36th July, 1918. "Any time the General wants a couple of Huns he can have them." The words were spoken neither in boast nor in jest, for what the man said he could and did do, not once, but many times. It was worth noting, too, that the words came from the firm mouth of a lean, hard-bitten face, yet with , certain lines on it that indicated a kindly but shrewd humour. The man was Richard Charles Travis, and he had won the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Military Medal, and had been awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. All these, and more, he had well earned. His great galantry was matched only by his innate modesty. Among 1 his own comrades he was affectionately known as ("Dick, the Rough-house Merchant," from the fact that many a German shell-hole, sap, and dug-out had immediately been turned into "a rough house" upon the occasions of his frequant but, uncertain visits. Undoubtedly he was the King of the New Zealand Raiders. ''No Man's Land" was his home. He lived in it night and day. He knew every sap and *hi>ll-hole, every tree and turn in and about it. He knew it better than he knew his own trenches. And, in addition, he knew, the methods and habits of the German soldier as few men knew them. He was so kindly a'man that he would not hurt a fly, but he would kill Huns by the hundred. Away back in the stirring times of Attila there must have been some ancestor of his in the armies that tried to stem the tide of advancing Huns—someone who had been witness of their methods, and, with a growing spirit of revenge, had watched the lighting of .their sacrificial pyres. How 'otherwise could Richard Travis have patiently and successfully planned the destruction of so many modern examples of the Attilan hordes? Richard Travis was what, in. the vernacular of the modern soldier, one would call "a hard doer." I believe that he came to New Zealand from • Arizona, that home of the adventurous, where one might well imagine his days spent in taming the spirit of some wild -Bronco, and his nights devoted to social intercourse, with a "gun" always handy in his hip pocket, ready for any "rough-house incident that might suddenly blaze up in front of counter oi' saloon bar. In either case one might *be sure that he would more than hold his own, and that his might would be on the side of right. What favouring breeze blew him to distant New Zealand I do not know, but, once there, he seems to have found congenial occupation in horse-breaking, at which he was a past master. When war was declared he enlisted in. the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, and he went hot-foot after them when they sailed from Egypt as infantry to take their share in the stirring work- that, under our present General fell to their lot on Gallipoli. It was out on the left towards Suvia that ho first began to. show his preference for No-Man's-Land. At Armentieres he did splendid work, and in 1916, after we had trekked to the Sorame, we began t<> hear of him again;, this time as -a killer of Germans. In those days, unless ho wanted a man to dig a hole for'Mm,- or to do some stretcherbenring, he seldom took a prisoner. Once, coming upon a party of Germans who showed fight, he kept a. few of, them for stretcher work, and he himself ;marched with them for several trips until they droppod from sheer fatigue. Sometimes, too, he saved a few prisoners to sample the German rations and the German beer and wine to make sure that it was not poisoned. He could never quite trust the Germans. He was, to the fore again in PJoegsteert. On the 22nd of October, 1916, he won his D.C.M., and early in 1918 he.was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. On the 14th ofMay, 1918, he won the Military Medal. This was during operations ea^t of Hebnteme, during which he displayed conspicuous gallantry and devotion to d-uty. He went out with a party of four men in broad daylight and captured an enemy machine-gun post. Although his own unit was in the supportlines he volunteered to go ou6 and obtain an enemy identification that was urgently required. He left our front line at 7.15 p.m., and by talcing advantage of the lie of the ground he crept up to the Germans unobserved and surprised seven of them. The officer of the post showed fight, and had to be shot. Thereupon the other Germans gave the alarm to a neighbouring post, the memb«rs of which rusb'ed down a sap to the aid of their comrades, firing, as they came, at the small New Zealand party. In the melee two of the German prisoners who were being taken through No-Man's-Land. were shot by their would-be rescuers. The withdrawal with the others was very cleverly covered by Travis, who stood his/ground until ho had emptied his revolver at the other Germans. He and his comrades, during the withdrawal, were subjected to heavy machine-gun fire, and were sniped at from the German positions, yet they returned unhit with their prisoners, the' whole adverfture being conducted with the utmost audacity and •coolness. ' , In the subsequent fighting at Oceanvillers, early in April, Travis was wounded in the jaw, and had several teeth

knocked out. He was sent back to a Field Ambulance, thence to the Denfrii Hospital, for a new lot of teeth. But dressing stations and dental hospitals had no charms for his restless spirit, and he. chafed at the delay. 'He persuaded doctors and dentists to treat him out of his turn so that he might get back to the firing-line at the earliest possible moment. , " Recently, when, after a few weeks' spell behind the lines, his-regiment returned to the. front in a new sector, he at. once proceeded to make No Man's Land his home again. It was a new No Man's Land, but lie lost no time in making himself familiar with it. Day and night he patrolled and investigated. For. 'tho attacks that were pending he located every enemy post arid every bit of wire that would be likely to'hold up the attack. The remarkable accuracy with which he did this was proved when the Otago men went through- Rossignol Wood and afterwards gained the high ground beyond. During the attack tlu, other day he and his little band killed tho crews of two machine-guns and captured . the guns, and when he saw the enemy massing for an attack he boldly advanced and chased them away. In the attack that secured the high ground in front of the wood he-.went up to the enemy wire one minute before the bom bardment was dua to come down, and, with hand grenades, in broad daylight, he blew the wire away! This was to make- sure that it.would be cut and would not hold up our infantry when they-came along, for it was not quite certain that the trench mortars would cut it, seeing that they had not been able to register for fear of giviiig away their position and the impending attack. This daring bit of work successfully accomplished, he dashed back just in time before the barrage came down. But even when his work was finished hb refused to stay back. ■ "No, sir," he said to his commanding officer, '"1 vaunt go back to my men at the front, for some of them are new hands, and I mast give them all the help I can." From the last fight he came back with a, leather satchel filled with German maps and taken from an officer whom ho had killed. In the "bivvy" of his-battalion commander this afternoon I saw the satchel. "I said I would keep the case for him/ and this is the case," said the Major^ who was in temporary command. I was shown "also Travis's last report. It was. written in rather a sctawly hand, and was .somewhat illiterate, but I could see' that the Major handled it thoughtfully, even affectionately. A man of strong personality and determination, he was impatient of orders. He was on terms of intimacy, even offriendship, with the officers of his regiment. For his little band of daring adventurers he was allowed to pick and choose his own men, and certainly he made a, wonderful selection of scouts. Like their chief, they armed themselves mostly with German automatic pistols and bombs. They took with them also their gas masks. Rifle and .bayonet they invariably left behind, and they scorned to wear the steel helmet. In this respect they were a law unto themselves. Instead they wore worsted Balaclava caps. Officers and men used to watch tho band climbing over the parapet on their Ivo Ma.n Js Land erands; wearing this strange head gear, made more fantastic still by the green twigs with which it was decorated. It was a camouflage that pre-.' sagfcd death 'or captivity for, many an unwary Hun. In such guise they certainly looked a ruffianly band, and woe betide the occupants of the post or trench they were out to capture, though, in ordinary life each one of them may have been as mild a nian as ever slit a weasand. Baxter, one of the band; was killed at Passchendaele. Another, who got a D.C.M. in the fighting near Hebuterne, was ao badly wounded that he is returning to New Zealand. These were two of Trayis's beat men. Their, work was splendid. But modern war alters quickly the composition of any unit, and. a few, weeks have brought ■ changes in this little band. ... ...'■■■ In the fighting in .front of Rossignol Wood, Travis was in his element, and in high spirits. One of his exploits was to bomb down a trench, and 6end such of the enemy as were not killed or wounded flying for their lives. When he came back he gleefully told the O.C. that if he hadn't run out of bombs he would have been marching on Berlin! At one stage of the fighting he had captured three Germans, whom, for greater safety, he took into one of their own dug-outs. The Germans, being three to one, turned on him, and a burly Prussian knifed him in the leg,, whereupon he promptly pulled out his automatic Tevolver killed all three. During his various enterprises, Travis made wonderful collections of battle souvenirs. Sometimes he came back from a. raid with things hung all about him, looking more like a travelling pedlar than a soldier. Binoculars^ by Goertz and Carl.Zeiss, costly stereoscopic peri-, scopes, automatic revolvers, and many other trophies fell to his lot; but he was. generous in spirit^ and invariably he gave them away to friends and acquaintances. . ■ -.-•.-.■ He was .killed instantaneously by a stray shell while sitting in a dug-out. It was perhaps hard luck, after all'his stirring adventures at the front, that Richard Travis should have been killed by a chance shell. . But it ? was, after all, the death he might have wished for. At any rate, no. German got him in a hand-to-hand encounter, • and his fame will go down in history as the invincible King of the New Zealand Raiders. His own comrades insisted on carrying his body out from the front.line. This they did reverently, because they had a great affection for him. In the evening his funeral passed from tho farm across a shallow valley, and through' a sleepy village to the soldiers' graveyard on the ridge beyond, the band of the Battalion playing the Dead March from "Saul," and many of his comrades marching in the procession., ■