MISSING SOLDIER Offical Inquiry By Army

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32386, 27 August 1970, Page 12

MISSING SOLDIER Offical Inquiry By Army

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, August 25. An official inquiry is being held into the disappearance of LanceCorporal George Porter while on an Army exercise in flooded swampland near Meremere.

It was revealed tonight that treacherous conditions in the swamp forced one of the five soldiers on the exercise to change his original plan of crossing through the swamps and instead to skirt round them.

Corporal Porter, aged 25, married, with one child, was not found today in spite of an intensive search of the swamp by more than 110 soldiers and police. He has not been seen since Thursday night, when, with four other soldiers, each moving separately, he was instructed to make his way from a point on the fringe of the swamp to a point about two miles away. The officer in charge of Papakura Military Camp (Colonel D. R. Kenning), said tonight an official inquiry into Corporal Porter’s disappearance was being held while the search continued.

The investigation being conducted now could develop into a Court of Inquiry. “Any accident or mishap is

investigated by the Army,” he said. He said the Army was aware when the exercise began that the swamp at Meremere was in a flooded condition. The acting-commander of the No. 1 Ranger Squadron of the Special Air Service (Captain T. N. Culley) said tonight that some of the men on the exercise had “takj?n the easy way through the outside of the swamp.” “It was longer but safer,” he said. One man had started to trek through the swamps but had decided discretion was the better part of valour when he found conditions becoming very difficult. Corporal Porter was a Territorial serviceman who was undertaking the exercise for possible selection as a regular soldier with the No. 1 Ranger Squadron. He was carrying a compass, a rifle, and a pack when he was dropped off by road at 10.30 p.m. on Thursday. He was expected at the rendezvous point on Friday morning.