MISSING EX-OFFICER

Evening Star, Issue 23726, 6 November 1940, Page 2

MISSING EX-OFFICER

LARGE LEGACY AVAILABLE More than £16,000 has been left to an ex-officer who disappeared! from his home in Crowhurst, Sussex, on lebruarv 27 (savs the ‘ Sunday Express ’). His wife is now practically penniless. She cannot obtain any of the money, as she is unable to prove he was living at the time the bequest was made. Tho missing man is Geoffrey John Croisdale Kirk, >vho was wounded m the last war while serving as a lieutenant in tho Royal Artillery. Towards the end of last year Mr Kirk and his wifo left their homo in Kensington for Crowhurst. Now, Mrs Kirk hasTcome back to their London home m tho hope that her husband will return there. She thinks he is suffering from shock and loss of memory. “ My husband was a nervous wreck following his injuries in the last war," she said. “ He would never meet people, nor could he be induced to talk even to acquaintances. For five years after the war ho was a patient in a hospital at Sidcup, and after that spent many months in a London hospital. My husband was very depressed at Crowhurst. Ho wanted to get back to tho Army, and used to shut himself away studying the newspapers or listening to tho radio. In November he disappeared for a week. I discovered then that he came up to London, and each day visited our empty house in Kensington. Then he came back to Crowhurst. “On February 27 I,was out, and returned home to find a telegram from his mother asking him to telephone herI am told he went out of the house, and was seen at the railway station taking a train for St. Leonards. Ho took neither his identity card, his ration card, nor his gas mask. Ido know that ho was alive on March 25, for lie was seen on that day in St. Leonards. “On April 13 his mother died suddenly, and in her will she left £32.800 to be divided between my husband and his brother. 1 cannot do anything to obtain any of this money unless 1 can prove my husband was alive after April 13. In a will which he made a long time ago be left everything to me. But now I am stranded and almost penniless. Although in receipt of a pension, be has not drawn a penny of it since he vanished. He is a man who would easily bo recognised. There is a big scar over his chin, and on the right cheek. His nose, too. is misshapen, and Ins left shoulder is higher than the right.” 1 Mr Kirk is 45, about sft 9in in height, of slim build, has dark hair and dark grey pves