ADVENTUROUS YOUTH

Grey River Argus, 2 May 1942, Page 4

ADVENTUROUS YOUTH

-RUNS AWAY FROM HOME TO GO TO THE WAR. P.AI. CHRISTCHURCH, May 1. Because he considered he was not not doing enough towards the war effort, a sixteen-year-old pupil of tiie Christchurch Boys’ High School, Douglas Collier Blake, ran away from home last October, and worked

his way to England aboard a cargo ship to join the Army. The boy repeatedly told his father that he v.fanted to go to war, as his two brothers were already overseas. He secretly went to a shipping line and signed on for service as a coal screener on an overseas ship, stating that he was eighteen. He left, home on a Friday to spend Hie week-end with friends—as his parents thought—but on the Sunday his father received a note from his son explaining what he had done. By then the ship had left. The boy’s father communicated with the Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. p. Fraser, who sent messages about the boy to Mr. W. J. Jordan, High Commissioner, in London. Mr. Jordan arranged that the boy should be cared for when he arrived in England Blake arrived in Glasgow, • over two months later, to find instructions left for him by his brother, Wing-Commander M. V. Blake, D.F.C., who had flown to Glasgow from his station, in Cornwall. As the ship was late, the elder brother was unable to wait for its arrival. When he. reached London, the boy wds persuaded to complete his education in England, and to study for a‘ commission. Yesterday his father bad a letter from his son in the Air Force, saying that in February the three sons’ met in Cornwall. The third brother is Petty-Officer Nelson Blake.