N.Z. SOLDIER PRAISED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 267, 23 August 1946, Page 3

N.Z. SOLDIER PRAISED

WORK IN GERMAN PRISON CAMP (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, August 22. A tribute to-the work of a New Zealand soldier, lan Graham Rybuin, Dunedin, since ordained as a mimstei of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, in counteracting efforts by -the Germans to obtain recruits among British prisoners for the so-called Bntish Free Corps ,was paid by Quarter-master-Sergeant J. H. O. Brown, ot Sudbury-on-Thames, who has just, been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his work while a prisoner of war in Germany. Brown and Ryburn met in the Genshagen pnsoner of war camp near Berlin, where the Germans were endeavouring to leciuit men for the free corps. “A New Zeßland friend of mine, lan Ryburn, laboured unceasingly to turn the men’s thoughts to religion and away from German offers, says Brown, who claims that largely as a result of this work the German Free Corps scheme .met an almost complete lack of response. In October, 1944, the Presbytery of Dunedin agreed to authorise the ordination of Ryburn and delegated it? powers for that purpose to the Rev. R. J. Griffiths, a New Zealand Presbyterian chaplain, who was then in the same prison camp. The German authorities agreed to permit the ordjnation ceremony to take place in the camp and it was carried out with the assistance of representatives of .the Young Men’s Christian Association, who acted as intermediaries.

Brown, who was a member of a British anti-tank regiment, was one of the chief prosecution witnesses, in charges subsequently brought against the few British soldiers who joined the free corps.