Father Tells of Dying Son’s Ordeal

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 62, 15 March 1937, Page 5

Father Tells of Dying Son’s Ordeal

LYING WOUNDED IN HUT TOR WEEK IS AIDED BY ARAB AND PRIEST Left for a week after being badly wounded by a bomb in Palestine on August 10, a soldier was aided iirst by an Arab and then by an American priest, who had him removed to hospitThis was the story told to the Daily .Sketch by Mr Sidney Howell, of Sandringham gardens, Pinchley, following his complaints at the inquest on his son, Corporal Regina! Ilowell, aged 24, of the Army Service Corps. “When I saw my son in a London hospital,” said Mr Howell, ”he gave me a paper with the name and address of the Rev. Father Kestbergen, chief of the American Carmelite School at j Nablus, and asked me to write expressing his thanks because the boy said 'He [kept me alive for a week.' ” Mr Howell said his son did not willingly tell at first the 'drcunistances of the case, but they elicited from him that after he had been found wounded he was taken to an Egyptian police hut and left there without any attention being paid to his wounds. A friendly Arab, seeing his distress, cut with a pocket-knife a large stone from out of one leg and a smaller stone from the other. He lay without further attention in the hut until Father Kestbergen found him. Afterwards ho was removed to hospital at Sarafand. “My son,” Mr Howell lidded, “had other serious injuries, and ho was removed to Cairo. “He was brought to England in October and died in hospital.” His mother told the Daily Sketch that when she said she would communicate with the War Office about the treatment or lack of treatment of her son he had replied: ‘‘Don’t do that, mother. Remember, I am a soldier still. . . .” The coroner was told Howell was operated on on Novermber 19 and some metal was taken from behind his ear. j lie became worse and died from meningitis.