PLEDGE GIVEN NOT TO FIGHT AGAIN

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23412, 20 August 1941, Page 8

PLEDGE GIVEN NOT TO FIGHT AGAIN

His appeal was adjourned sine die, on condition that he join some form of emergency precautions work.

SEAMAN WHO WAS ON RANGITANE

A butcher who was one of the crew of the Rangitane and who spent some time as a prisoner on a Nazi raider, finally sigriing an agreement not aghin to fight in this war, was released from territorial training by the Christchurch Manpower Committee yesterday. He was Frederick Ivor Howells, now living in St. Martins and working as a butcher in Christchurch, and he was drawn in a recent territorial ballot.

The official attitude to service, by men in Howells’ position was explained in a letter from Wellington, which said that men who had . signed the undertaking not to fight again were nof to bear arms, but could be posted to a non-combatant unit, Howells told the committee that as well as his experiences in the shelling of. the Rangitane and on the Nazi raider, he had served 16 months in the mercantile marine during this war, had been in convoys which had been attacked, and had been in air-raids in Liverpool. His present job was replacing a man sent overseas. He was willing to do emergency precautions work and had had some experience in auxiliary police work in Liverpool. While on Emirau Island he had become subject to an obscure and recurrent fever and his health was not of the best.