Amongst other things, the writer says: ''You might be interested to know that there has been no British soldier in this hospital with a bayonet wound. No doubt you will have read of the wretched weather and awful times our men have had in the trenches.
''I get them here after they have stood for days and nights up to their waists in water. We have no idea of the hardships they are enduring.
''Fortunately comparatively few of these are frost bitten, their trouble being merely a swollen condition of the feet, due to standing in the cold water. They soon get well again. I have only seen two or three cases where amputations were necessary.
''Our great trouble was the awful sepsis of the gas gangrene. No one has ever seen anything like it before. There have not been quite so many of these cases since the winter came on.
''Sometimes the men are lying out days before they are picked up and seen to, and it is this delay which is the cause of so much wastage of life.
''We have the best hospital in France, and the most distinguished staff of specialists. Everything happens here and all distinguished visitors call.
''I was not actually introduced to the King, but I was standing beside him and the Prince of Wales for about 10 minutes. The King was delightfully free and easy.''
• In a letter to his mother, dated February 21, Lieutenant commander B. C. Freyberg, the well known Wellington swimmer, now with the Royal Naval Division, writes: ''We are on our way again, and are off on an expedition into the Mediterranean, perhaps to Constantinople.
''We are to be a landing party to the fleet, and are trying to force the Dardanelles for a passage of Russian wheat.
''That is as far as we are able to guess. We are likely to be away for a few months, and then are going to land in France and go up to the big show in Germany ... I am promoted, and am third in command of the battalion, and hope to get a battalion before the war finishes. Tomorrow the King reviews us, and then we are off.''
It will be remembered that Lieutenant Freyberg was with the Naval Division at the fall of Antwerp, and was wounded.
• Here is an instance (telegraphs our Greymouth correspondent) of the grit which characterises the West Coast pioneers.
At the age of 90 years, Mr James Seymour, after fulfilling a bushfelling contract in the vicinity of Nelson, has returned to Reefton and commenced prospecting for a lead of gold at Liverpool (Davis Creek), within view of the town.
Single handed, he has driven a tunnel over 100ft, and in a further few feet of driving expects to intercept the lead of auriferous wash.
Mr Seymour left the Home Country at a very early age - so long back, indeed, that his first glimpse of a railway train was on making a trip to the seaside from Reefton to Greymouth.
• An impression has prevailed for some time that the Maori rat, known as Kiore, has become extinct.
That such is not the case (says the Auckland Star) is proved by the fact that Colonel Boscawen has handed alive to Mr T. Chesseman, Curator of the Auckland Museum, a live Maori rat which he caught at Maherau, in the Coromandel district.
- ODT, 9.4.1915.
