Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1917 — IN AFRICAN JUNGLE [ARTICLE]

IN AFRICAN JUNGLE

British Aviator Relates His Expert* ence of Four Days. Horrible experiences of a British aviator who came down in an East African jungle are described by him in a letter just received by a relative at London. The aviator, Lieut. G. Garrood, went up to bomb a German ambush on the Rufiji river, but through engine trouble had to desceiid in the bush, the machine landing with broken propeller in a bog. It took him four days to make his way to a place of safety. He tells how in the dusk he was confronted with an ugly black animal about four feet high with vicious tusks. He climbed a tree and prepared to put in the night there. Later he opened his eyes and saw something like two green electric bulbs about 30 feet from the tree. They moved around In a circle. This continued for 45 minutes. He says: “The tension was unbearable. I wanted to scream, shout and yell all in one, bui Instead I burst out with •The Admiral’s Broom,’ and with a full-throated bass I roared out the three verse i. No applause, but a re- 1 , ward—the leopard slunk away. Why! had I not thought of it before?

“I went through my repertoire. Ij laughed as I finished ‘Two Eyes of Grey.’ It seemed so ridiculous. Then < got on to hymns, remembered four verses of ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past,’ and sang the ‘Amen,’ too. The, whole thing had its ludicrous side.” Next morning while swimming a river he passed seven yards from a, crocodile’s mouth, but just reached the bank in time. Without food, or arms —his only weapon of defense his nails scissors—his progress throughj the awful bush was about 100 yards i an hour. Tils clothing was in ribbons, ami his flesh exposed to the thorns,sword grass and flies.

He swam seven more rivers that day ami sank down exhausted against a tree. He could hoar a lion roaring about 500 yards away, and, somewhat nearer, the grunting of a hippopotamus. He continues f “Being exhausted, I more or less lost consciousness for perhaps half an hour or so. Nothing short of a hippo charging could have made me climb | a tree. Am afraid life had little to I jffer about that time.” It was while lying here that the' lieutenant had the annoying expert-1 ence of surveying two large babboons,, the size of a small man, quarreling i over his trousers, now in threads, and I among the tops of 40-foot trees. It was not until he had passed another horrible day and equally terrible night In the bush that he at Iftst was picked up by some natives. “Their eyes seldom left me,” he adds. “Undoubtedly I was a strange sight—my legs bare and bleeding, my short \>st sodden, dirty and torn, no trousers, of course, just a dirty sun helmet, a short stick in my right hand md with four days’ growth of beard m my dirty face.” ( A new supply of parchment butterwrappers just received at The Democrat office and will be sold at the old price of 30 cents per 100.