BOMBER PILOT IN TROUPE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30200, 3 August 1963, Page 17

BOMBER PILOT IN TROUPE

Interpreter For Tahitians

A distinguished career as a bomber oilot in the Second World War is part of the history of Mr Nat Mara, the Tahitian interpreter for the South Sea Island Festival troune which will perform in Christchurch on Monday

and Tuesday. Mr Mara entered show business some years after the war and has his own Tahitian rroup of entertainers in Auckland Several recordings have been made of his singing and guitar-plaving. Mr Mara is a French citizen As a bomber pilot serving with the Free French he flew 15 sorties over ■Furnoe and made a forced landing orv-e in the English Channel His distinguished serv”*'*? jc the number of awards he gained. He has been oresented with the lanvard of the Legion of Honour, the Medialle Militaire, the Corps de Guerre — which he received five times —’nd the Medaille de Resistance

Mr Mara first came to New Zealand to jo'n the Roy a! N'w Zealand Arr Force a’

If » outbreak of war He later went to Canada and from there began fighting for the Free French as a member of fire Royal Art force. Afte” the war. in 1946. he again flew in France in an airlift taking m’btary families to N •’■th Africa.

Two later he returned to Tahiti to work as a radio observer and meteorologist and a abort tune afte-wartte he moved to Auckland