Slept Under Leaves

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31677, 13 May 1968, Page 1

Slept Under Leaves

“I was very hungry and cold but I covered myself with leaves and went to sleep on the ground. I woke during the night and put more leaves on because I was still cold.”

That was how Mark Williams, who will be 12 today, described his lonely night in thick bush near Lobum on Saturday. Nursing badly scratched arms and legs, which his mother had soothed with cold cream. Mart said he had gone without food for 27 hours from 11 a.m. on Saturday until three deerstalkers had fed him on hot spaghetti, two apples and a piece of cheese at 2.30 p.m. yesterday. Mart was on his own frtm about 5 p.m_ on Saturday when he parted company with five other boys of the Third Christchurch Boys’ Brigade Company. He was dressed in light shorts, tennis shoes and socks and two pullovers.

He had left the boys in search of a route back to the Birch Hill camp.

He said he had told them to stay where they were until he got back. When he returned they had gone. FELL OVER

“Even when I knew I was lost I was not frightened,” he

said. “All I was worried about was that I would not be found. “I was trying to climb up a steep hill we had come down when I started to get tired. I hung on to tree branches to pull myself up but they snapped and I fell over. I was very tired so I put some leaves on the ground and lay on them, then covered myself with more leaves. “I put the leaves on the ground first so that I would not get a chill in the back. “When the sun got up I went down to the creek again and had a drink of water. I walked along the creek and I hfiard someone firing a gun.

•Then I saw a footprint so I yelled out 'help.’ I walked up the hill on the other side of the creek and the men saw me. They asked me where my father was and I told them I was lost “We walked for about an hour and we met some search and rescue people. My mother and father drove me back to Christchurch.”

The boy’s discovery had special significance to his mother, Mrs H. Williams. He was born on Mother’s Day 12 years ago. , The photograph shows Mask Williams at his home in Knowles Street last evening.