“UP DEAD AND AT 'EM!"

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 4003, 9 August 1915, Page 3

“UP DEAD AND AT 'EM!"

HOUSES FRENCH TO ATTACK. SOLDIERS WITH BROKEN LEGSA wounded lieutenant told the following story to a representative oi the Havas Agency : . “We were at work fixing up a trench we bad carried, with two sentinels watching at the sandbags harn(•aditm tile end so that we could work ciuictlv. Suddenly from a communication trench which we had not semi an avalanche of hand grenades fell on our iicalls. Before we knew, 10 moil were laid low. dead or wounded, m a heap. •T was just opening my mouth to urge them to attack when a stone from the parapet, loosened by a prone tile, hit me on the head and I ten unconscious, hut not tor more than second, as a- diell splinter tore mA hand and the pain brought me to. “As I opened my eyes 1 saw -m' Roches leaping over the handlings into the trench. 'They had no rilles butcarried a sort of wicker painer lull <> bombs. I looked ward my hut; all our men were gone, the trench wits empt-v. The .Bodies were advancing; a few more steps and they would be on me. . “At this moment one of my men, i laid out on the ground with a wound in j in’s forehead, another on liis chain, and his whole face streaming with blood sat 'up, seized a sack of grenades near I him, and shouted: ‘Up, dead, and at

’em!’ . , ‘•He got on his knot's and hurled «renades into the thick of too Hoc lies. At his cnll throe other wounded started up. 'Two of thorn, who had broken legs, seized rifles and began a rapid fire, every shot of which told* Iho third, whose left arm hung limp, toreout his bayonet with his- right. When 1 bad recovered enough lo rise, ha t the enemy was down, the other hall in disorderly flight. “There remained only with his bach against the barricade and an iron shield in front of him, a huge noncommissioned officer, sweating, red with rage, who was firing at us wit.: bis revolver, bravely enough, t must

“The man who bad started the defence, the hero of .‘Up. dead, aim at ’em 1 ’ was struck bv a bullet m the V-uv. and down he fell. The man with ’the" bayonet, who had been crawling from body to laxly, jumped to his foot, when four paces from the barricade, was missed bv two shots from the Bach’s revolver, and plunged the weapon into his enemy’s throat. Ihe position was saved.”