READS LIKE BOOK

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 151, 28 June 1945, Page 6

READS LIKE BOOK

AUCKLANDER'S LIFE

INTIMATE OF ARAB TRIBES

"He was a bright boy."

That is how a member of the Auckland staff of Cable and Wireless, Limited, this morning described Group-Captain Dudley Hardwicke Marsack, who has crammed into his 35 years enough adventure, to fill several romances in the Oppenheim tradition. « ..

King's ' College education, telegraphist, member of the R.A.F., Moslem convert, intimate: of the Arabs, and now accused of being a British agent-provocateur —that is his story in a nutshell.

Youngest son of the late Dr. Marsack, of Remuera, Dudley Marsack, like his brothers, was educated at King's School and King's College. One of the masters at the college today said he was a small boy but very alert, and keen on whatever sport he took up. He entered the college in February, 1923, and studied there for two years as a day boy, before he joined the Pacific Cable Board.

At school he was a '|good allrounder" in sport, but did not remain there long enough to become prominent in games or as a prefect. The master said the Marsacks were intensely British, from the doctor down to the youngest son, Dudley, who Avas "as fine a specimen of a Britisher as one could hope to meet."

"Dudley Marsack gained his experience in telegraphy at our training school here in Auckland," said a member of the staff of Cable and Wireless, Limited, this morning. "He was very bright and alert, and was always up to mischief, but, of course, he was a young chap .then. A popular boy, he performed his, work very creditably."

Marsack stayed in this job from 1925 until 1929, when he was transferred to Halifax, Nova Scotia. However, he became restless and resigned from the cable firm to go to England about 1931, and join his brother, Alfred—known to his King's schoolmates as "Fatty"—in the Royal Air Force. Absorbed In Ufe Of East Gaining a short service commission in the R.A.F., Dudley Marsack was posted to the No. 4 Flying Training School, Abu Sueir, Egypt, and became absorbed in the life of the East. In 1933 he passed the Arabic classical examinations, and was appointed a desert intelligence officer. For 11 years he has been in close association with the Arabs and speaks Arabic perfectly, besides understanding many other languages. He was mentioned in dispatches for the first time in 1938 for his work in the Palestine rising.

Not only does Marsack talk like an Arab, and with his desert tan, perhaps pass for an Arab, but also, like his brother, Alfred, he has adopted the Moslem faith.

Dudley, who holds the rank of Group-Captain, is now deputy-British Press attache at Damascus, and Wing-Commander Alfred Marsack, M.8.E., is director of the Near East Arab broadcasting station. With them in Damascus is their mother, who joined them in Egypt shortly after the death of Dr. Marsack. The eldest brother is understood to in business in Hawke's Bay.

Earlier this month Dudley Marsack and Colonel Frank Stirling, a 65-year-old Englishman, and right-hand man of the late Lawrence of Arabia, were named by the French General Fernand Oliva-Roget, who fought against the Australians in Syria in 1941, as being British agentsprovocateur, responsible for stirring, up trouble in Syria. Both laughed at the accusation, characterising it as being "sheer nonsense." The King's College master who told of his recollections of Dudley Marsack, said that the two brothers had played host to college old boys in the Services in Cairo, and that these men spoke in high terms of the "wonderful treatment" they had received from the Marsacks.

Dudley and Alfred Marsack have gone a iong way, but they have not forgotten their homeland, nor their former associations.