DUEL WITH SWORDS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 112, 17 November 1928, Page 9

DUEL WITH SWORDS

VETERANS OF GREAT WAR STRANGE SYDNEY CASE United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received 17th November, 10 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. The story of a duel with swords between an ex-British Army officer and a former subordinate was related in the City Police Court, when John Thompson, 40, was charged with inflicting actual bodily harm on William Gibb. The police gave evidence that they found two swords bloodstained in a house at Paddington, and blood on the floor and bed-clothes. Thompson was lying on a bod. Gibb denied that he challenged Thompson to a duol, and added that it was only a friendly fight. "Tho colonel and I," ho said, "would not hurt each other.'' Both fought in the Great War. Gibb said he was a retired welfare officer from New Zealand. "We both went into a newspaper shop together," he said, "and Thompson threw a bag of eggs at me. I went home. Thompson came home later, comparatively sober, and exclaimed: 'Jimmy Gibb, you aro a dead man.' " Then commenced a fight with swords, in which Gibb was wounded iv the arms. Thompson's version was that he drew the sword in self-defence. Thompson was committeed for trial.