Navy Helps Sailor To Fly To Sick Wife In N.Z.

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27912, 8 March 1956, Page 17

Navy Helps Sailor To Fly To Sick Wife In N.Z.

(N.Z. Press Asso< (Bee. 8 p.m.) LONDON, March 7. The Royal Navy is paying the £3OB air fare of 21-year-old Christopher Laidlaw to fly to his sick wife’s bedside in New Zealand, according to the “Daily Mail” today. Mrs Laidlaw, of Taranaki, who is also 21, will go into hospital in about two weeks for a serious heart operation. ... Christopher Laidlaw is a sailor with six years’ service, but when he boards the plane at London airport on Friday he will be a civilian. He said last night as he packed his bags at Portsmouth barracks: “The Navy has made me a debtor of honour. I serve my last three years in the New Zealand Navy only when I know Ruth is well. They accepted my word of honour that I would—no signing, no forms to fill in.” He is expected at his wiles Tara-

nation—Copyright) naki bedside on Tuesday. A week later she will be operated on to remove a heart valve and replace it with a nylon one. Christopher met Ruth, who is a farmer’s daughter, six months ago in Dunedin, when he was in the crew of the cruiser Newcastle, the “Daily Mail” said. The cruiser sailed to Wellington and Ruth followed. Five days later he proposed, knowing the cruiser was leaving New Zealand a week later. Ruth was to have followed and lived with his parents in Edinburgh, but a cablegram said she was dangerously ill. It was then that the Navy told him he would be discharged on the proviso that he served out his term in the New Zealand Navy. Christopher said that after his term ended he would go dairy farming with Ruth’s father at the foot of Mount Egmont.