Obituary Captain A. C. Carston

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30447, 22 May 1964, Page 9

Obituary Captain A. C. Carston

Captain Albert Charles Carstbn, who died in Christchurch this week, once received a gold watch from the German president, Baron, von Hindenburg, which he later wished Jie had not earned. His family related yesterday how Captain Cafston rescued a German flying ace, Wolfgang von Gronau, from, his ditched flying-boat in the Indian Ocean just before the war.

The Germans gave him a medal’, but Captain Carston wished he had left the German pilot where he was when he later found himself in a Japanese prison camp and learned that von Gronau was the man who trained the Japanese pilots. Captain Carston, who was 69, was captured when his ship, H.M.S.. Mata Harl was sneaking through the Japanese Navy crowded with evacuees from Singapore. The Mata Hari .hid in river mouths and inlets by day and threaded through the Japanese forces by night. It was the very last Japanese ship which caught them. The ship’s officers were kept at Changi Prison, but Captain Carston, because of his war exploits, was sent to Japan to be imprisoned. He had been in charge of the evacuation from Thailand.

Captain Carston served with the Worcestershire Regiment in World War I and was wounded twice. In World War II he served with the Royal Naval Reserve. After the war he joined the British India Steam Navigation Company and the P. and O. Line. He was a member of the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Company of Master Mariners.

Captain Carston is survived by a son and five daughters.