NEW MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 4, 6 January 1938, Page 5

NEW MAN.

HIS LUCK CHANGED.

"I'VE GOT HOPE AGAIN."

V.C. WAS SELLING MATCHES. After standing in the putter in Market Street. Manchester, for nearly three years, selling matches. Sergeant John Hogan, the second man to win the V.C. in the Great War. has become dresser and valet to a variety *tar. Sergeant Hogan's plight was revealed in the ''Sunday Express," whereupon Mr. Benny Ross, the American entertainer, wrote to the editor asking to be put in touch with the forgotten V.C.

"I am so darned sorry for him that I want to give him a job." he said.

Hogan, who is 52 and a widower with a son in the Xavy. arrived at Euston from Manchester, in rags, and hungrv. Mr. Ross was waiting to greet him.

"Guess, he needs new clothes and a feed, were his first words, and Hogan was taken by car to a restaurant and given a square meal.

Proudly lie showed his Y.C., with the tattered red ribbon, now sadly grimed.

From the restaurant Ho;>an was taken to a firm of West End tailors, where a complete wardrobe was provided for him.

"I feel a new man," declared Hogan 'I've got hope in life again.

"When I left the Army in 1910 I got a ])ost office job. but .that did not last long.

'"There was 110 dole for 1110. so I had to take any odd job I could find. In the end I was forced to the gutter to tvell matches.

"Xo one wanted an old soldier, and my V.C. did not count for anything. "It is terrible work trying to sell a box of matches. Some days I have only made a shilling profit after standing in the pouring rain for hours. "I was down to my last halfpenny when the offer to work came throng 1 ! the "Sunday Express." That night" 1 could not sleep for thinking about it. "-My chief worry was mv clothes. I didn't feel I was fit to take a job on. Nothing breaks a man's spirit more than ragged clothing and hunger. "Now, I'm in a maze. I am afraid that T shall wake up and find it U all a dream." "I'm only too glad to think I can help Hogan,' Benny Ross chimed in. I think he will suit me. "I'm the proudest guy alive to think that I have got a V.C. for my personal servant. He'll soon fall into my ways, for from my experience of old soldiers, they can fit themselves into any job going." Sergeant Hogan von his V.C. on October 29. 1914, on the Festubert sector of the Western Front.