AFTER 21 YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 186, 7 August 1936, Page 9

AFTER 21 YEARS.

BROTHERS' MEETING.

GALLIPOLI RECALLED.

INVENTOR AND DOCTOR.

| On the shell-torn slopes of Gallipoli | two brothers fought side by side,' one ! a captain with the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces, and the other an j officer of the same rank with the Australians. Those hectic days of shell fire were recalled to-day when, after 21 years, I)r. W.. N. Abbott, of Auckland, greeted his brother, Mr. R. H. S. Abbott, now a noted inventor, when the Mariposa berthed at Prince's wharf this morning. And, after warm hand shakes, all one said to the other was, "You've got fat!" At the height of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli Mr. R. H. S. Abbott was badly wounded in the head at Lone Pine. He had his skull fractured and was rushed to England, with pieces of a six-inch shell in his head as souvenirs. About the same time Dr. Abbott was taken off Gallipoli with typhoid fever. Dr. Abbott awoke one morning in L ward of the Third London General Hospital to hear a nurse talking to a man in the bed alongside him and referring to him as "Captain Abbott." The man's , head was swathed in bandages, and Dr. ' Abbott could not recognise him for the moment—but it was only a moment. There were warm greetings. : Since those days the brothers had not met until this morning. They are the sons of ex-Senator R. H. S. Abbott, of . Northern Victoria, Australia. | After Mr. Abbott was discharged from hospital he was given a special post and became famed for his invention of j a driving band for the Stokes' trench mortar. After the war Mr. Abbott be-, came a director of Close Brothers and ' Company, merchant bankers, of Warbeck Street, and since then has won renown for a remarkable invention which is described in an interview in to-night's "Star." j