NEW ZEALAND D.C.M.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 4 January 1928, Page 9

NEW ZEALAND D.C.M.

PAUPER’S DEATH IN SYDNEY

FOUND IN BOARDINGHOUSE

A man past middle-age, who served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during: the war, was found dead in a cheap Sydney boarding establishment a fortnight ago. He was about to be given a pauper’s funeral when, first the Returned Sailors and Soldiers’ League, and later a relative, whose attention bad been caught by the publicity given to the man’s lonely death, came forward with money to pay for the burial. The New Zealander was Driver Sidney Wade. 50 years of age, one time sharefanner, lighthouse-keeper, shire engi neer, well-driller, and, during the war, a- member of the Field Artillery. He | had been a boarder at a Pitt Street I residential Chamber for 14 days. Obvious.y a sick man, a maid who had taken him to be sleeping at 9 o’clock one morning returned at 2 o’clock and found him dead. He had twopence in In’s pockets. He owned a tin box which contained, when opened by the police, a mass of papers mostly referring to his war experiences with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. A copy of N.Z.E.F- Orders, ' dated 30th April, 1918. recorded the issue of the Distinguished Conduct Medal to Wade in the following terms: ‘‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during lengthy operations, he showed tins greatest courage and skill under all conditions in pushing forward and delivering rations.” Other papers showed that he had belonged to a Queensland lodge, and a cancelled wil l in the back of his military identification book was apparently made to benefit a. sister living at r zee ton, N.S.W. Arrangements were first made bv the police to provide what is pathetically known as a pauper’s burial for Wade. — that is. the cost of the funeral was to be home by the State. But when it was discovered that Wade was a soldier the police communicated with the. Returned Soldiers’ League, which has standing instructions with the police to tell the league of any case in which “a soldier member of the great Empire family should die without leaving the means for a proper burial.’’ Penniless soldiers from al l parts of the Empire who have died in Australia have been saved from a pauper’s grave on a number of occasions by these instructions. But :in Wade’s case, hardlv had the league begun preparation® for Wade’s funeral than a nephew of the dead man went to the police and immediately arranged for the funeral at his expense.