COLONEL IN THE RANKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18547, 3 November 1923, Page 7 (Supplement)

COLONEL IN THE RANKS.

ENLISTED AS A PRIVATE. Once a lieutenant-colonel, now a lancecorporal, the son of a knight and the, bolder of the C.B.E. and the X>S.O.— this was part of the life story of Walter Russell Johnson, aged 34, as told by. himself at Westminster' Police Court in London recently.. Russell, a lance-corporal in the East Surrey Regiment,* was "charged with improper behaviour at the Victoria Palace Re emphatically denied the charges. He was a son, he paid, of the late Sir Walter Johnson. At the outbreak of the war ho -was senior captain in the 7th Battalion, Essex Regiment (Territorial Force), and saw service in Gallipoli, Egypt, and France, where he commanded a battalion of the' Essex Regiment.' ; ' Later he was sent to North Russia, where he was commanding offic?r on the lines of communication to .the Archangel force. After the evacuation he was attached to the Indian Army and did duty in India and Mesopotamia- For his cer.vices during the war he was awarded . the D.S.O. and made a C.B.E. Three times he was mentioned in dispatches, and retired with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Territorial Force. In February last he enlisted in the East Surrey Regiment with a view to obtaining a commission in the Regular Army. He had been recommended for a commission. Johnson was sent for trial, hail being allowed.