A WAR VETERAN.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 185, 5 August 1913, Page 2

A WAR VETERAN.

JKBVJSITTNG THE DOMINION.

A FAST-FADING BAND.

After an absence of twenty-two years, an old soldier who fought for the flag during the Maori wars is back in Auckland, and he is astonished at the changes he finds. Sergeant John Doy c, who, like so many brave soldiers of the Queen, comes from the Emerald Isle, arrived in the Waitemata in the good ship Euphrates in the year 1855. He was then a young fellow in the 65th, and as the rest of his Tegiment were down Wellington way he was attached to tbe 58th. The men landed at the Wyn-rard Pier, and were played up to the Albert Barracks by the band of the 58th. -All you people are too young to remember," he remarked to a "Star reporter this morning, and added regretfully: "There is no one I can talk to about those long-ago days." After being in Auckland for a short while, he was ordered up to the Ray of Islands, and subsequently to Napier. Service in Taranaki followed, and the sergeant was one of a party at Waitara Valley which went to relieve the men of the 40th Regiment, who wcrp in the foremost redoubt. This was at the beginning of hostilities in that part of the island. The Maoris had just reached the redoubt when the men of the relief party dashed up. The struggle was short, but sharp. The natives were driven off with the of about forty men. The Europeans lost ten.

Sergeant Doyle carries the marks of the day in a long slash on the wrist and the mark of a bullet that went through his hand between the thumb and first finger. Tbe slashed wrist was the work of a savage who had a kit fnll of tomahawks skmg across his shoulder. He used them with a long handle —a deadly weapon in the hands of a steel-wristed Maori—and as he naturally had a longerreach than the Tommy, armed with his short bayonet, he managed to get in a very pretty cut before lie was despatched.

Sergeant Doyle subsequently settled, down in the Hawke's Bay for some time, but about twenty-two years ago went to England in one of the Shaw, Savill wool ships. A visit to Ireland, and then a trip across to America, where he had relations, ended in the old soldier settling down in California, where his wife and daughter now live.

He would again like to live in the country where he spent such a pleasant time in his young days, and a few weeks ago he came down in the mail steamer. His ostensible object in visiting the scenes of his early manhood is to see if he can get an Imperial pension. Ht has exceflent discharges, and intends to approach the authorities to see if there is any chance of the pension that is usually grant-pd to old soldiers. He says he hardly knows the city of Auckland, but liere and there he can pick up a landmark or two that bears some faint resemblance-to the straggling little township he left. He adds rather pathetically that all the. comrades of his youth ore gone, and he would very much like to meet some of the old hands who remember the days when the sound of the bugle was heard from the Albert heights. At I present the sergeant is staying with Mr. S. C. Caulton at the Bay of Islands.