WAR ECHOES

Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1937, Page 6

WAR ECHOES

AFTER 20 YEARS MOTHER FINDS SON ALIVE LONDON, September 20. Two strange war stories came to light in England this week. A man who had always believed his soldier brother alive, learned officially that he had been killed in action 21 years ago. And in the same week a mother who had given up her son as dead discovered him living in their home town —and now the father of seven children. The man who received such belated news of tragedy was Air F. A. Magui re, of Lewisham, London. In 1916, his brother, Frank Wilfred Maguire, was reported missing in action after rejoining his regiment. For 21 years Air Alaguire refused to bitilieve iiis brother had been killed. The family never went into mourning, always hoping that, by some miraculous chance, the missing man would return.

This week the family will go into mourning The postman brought a letter, from Whitehall, which “regretted to announce'’ that the body of an ‘unknown British soldier” had been loiina in the vicinity of Eaucourt J’Abbave, France, and had been identified as the missing man. Maguire’s identity disc was enclosed. The happier story of the “dead” man who was alive is as follows:—Soon after the outbreak of the war John Sanders, of Ilfracombe, Devon, youth, joined the Army without telliug liis parents. He went to France. They were never able to discover in what regiment lie was serving.

The young man served to the eiia. then returned to Ilfracombe. But his parents had gone. After inquiries had failed to trace them, he assumed that they wei'e dead. Eventually he married and settled down in the town where ho was born.-

: From the day he joined the Army until this week lie had never seen his inother, although she has been living only a few miles away in South Devon, where she and her husband ■ moved while their son was in France. At the end of the war Air Sanders could not be traced and was posted “missing, presumed dead.” However, recently a relative visiting Ilfracombe met him in the street there, and discovered that, he is now the father of seven children and has been livifig there since the war. Air Sander's mother—his father is now dead—went to Ilfracombe this

week to see him and meet his wife and the seven grandchildren of whose existence she had never previously known.