DIGGERS' MASCOT.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19332, 9 June 1928, Page 19

DIGGERS' MASCOT.

KILLED IN MELBOURNE. TROOPS' SMUGGLING RUSES. (7BOX OT7B OWS CORBESPONDENT.) SYDNEY, June 1. "With the death in Melbourne of Henri Hermine Tovell, 18 years of age, a French war orphan, and mascot of the 4th Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, a remarkable incident of the Great War is recalled. Tovell ended his romantic career as the result of a collision between a motor-cycle he was riding and a taxi-eab. He was frightfully injured, and died in the Melbourne Hospital. Tovell's history, as the airmen knew it, began about January, 1915, in a small town in France. His father was killed in Flanders, and his mother died some time later as the result of an air raid, leaving him at the age of five years alone in the world. He wandered from his destroyed home and was adopted by a French Howitzer Battery. Three months later he was wounded and sent to hospital. When he recovered he was off again, and this time he joined up with the Field Artillery Brigade. He was again wounded, and next he found his way to the Royal Flying Corps section. He remained with the same section for some months, but wandered from one unit to another until the middle of 1917. Then but a boy, he "joined" the 4th A.F.C., which adopted him as its mascot. Ho lived as a. soldier should, a'nd was loved by everyone.

The Australians decided to smuggle the boy home when the armistice was signed, and he left Flanders in April, 1919, for Southampton. The French .police, however, knew that the boy was being taken away, and did their utmost to prevent him leaving Europe. Many ruses were adopted by the Australians to get him away. Ho was hidden among bags of official records, and in one of the bags he was smuggled aboard ship. He arrived at Southampton safely, and was equipped and turned out in the uniform of the Australian Flying Corps. The next difficulty was faced when the corps was leaving for Australia. The English civil police and the military police, acting in conjunction with the gendarmes, attempted to prevent the boy from going with' the Australians. When the men were boarding the steamer Kaiser-i-Hind several of them placed "Digger," as he was named, into a bran bag and packed a large number of loaves of bread about him The bag was stitched up and the res* was left to luck. Anxiety was felt when each sack of loaves was carefully examined, but the most important of the bags was late in the line, and by the time it was reached' the officials had become a little lax. Several of the loaves were taken from the sack which contained the boy, but the boy was not discovered, and he was kept under cover until the ship sailed. No difficulty was experienced in landing the boy in Australia. Tovell was a motor mechanic at the aerodrome at Point Cook, and it is stated that shortly he would have become a member of the Australian Flying Corps. Naturalisation papers were being prepared at the time of his death.