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Western Mail, Thursday, 31 October 1929, p. 2.
Literature, Luck and Pluck.
It is a fact that military decorations in the late war depended largely on luck. The literary ability or otherwise of the reporting officer had something to do with the acceptance or rejection of the deed as worthy of a decoration by brigade or higher headquarters. One young officer at the battle of Hamel, in 1918, is a case in point. The Germans had counter-attacked and recaptured part of a West Australian battalion's objective. They manned the trench with 100 men and mounted 15 machine guns in it. Entirely off his own bat the officer in question, with "a dozen men, rushed the trench from a flank next morning. The resistance made by the enemy can be gauged by the fact that thirty were killed in the bomb and bayonet fight which followed. Most of the thirteen assailants were killed or wounded, but it was a very vigorous young subaltern, still full of light, who handed the trench, 15 machine guns, and 70 prisoners over to the company which had been detailed to make the official effort to recapture the lost objective. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross, but the written description was not considered good enough, and he received instead the D.S.O. The general opinion in the battalion was that he fully deserved the higher honour. The officer's name was "Dick" Cornish, and he is now Mayor of Carnarvon, and is, or was until recently, president of the local branch of the R.S.L.