VETERAN OF THREE WARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19859, 1 February 1928, Page 12

VETERAN OF THREE WARS.

MR. P. DELANY'S CAREER. A SOLDIER OF' INKERMAN. The late Mr. Patrick Delany, who died at Ma (a mat a on Friday, in his hundredth year, was not only a veteran of the Indian Mutiny and the Maori War, but of the Crimean War as well. As a youth he saw much of the suffering caused by the Irish famine of 1847 and 1848, in which, it is estimated, 1.200,000 persons perished of starvation. In 1850, when the worst was over and his parents were reasonably well provided for, he enlisted, seeing no career ahead of him in his natiye land. On the outbreak of the Crimean War he was drafted to the Black Sea, and took part in the Battle of the Alma. At Inkerman, "the soldier's battle," in which the British defeated five times their own number, after a series of desperate hand-to-hand combats, he was severely wounded. Removed aboard ship to the. hospital established by Florence Nightingale at Scutari, near Constantinople, he made a good recovery, and rejoined his regiment in timo to witness the fall of Sebastopol. After the declaration of peace in 1856, with only a few weeks' intermission, he was drafted to India. The following year the mutiny broke out, and his regiment was engaged in nearly every battle of importance. On one occasion, with five companions, he was taken'prisoner by the mutineers and was sentenced to be shot at dawn. In the night he escaped and rejoined the British troops at sunrise. One of Mr. Delany's most cherished possessions in his last years was a letter from the Governor-General, Sir Charles •Fergusson, congratulating him upon his record of service to the Empire, especially in the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny, in which Sir Charles' own father, Si'' James Fcrgusson, had also fought. It is believed that Mr. Delany's death leaves only one New Zealand sur r riv6r of the three campaigns, namely, Mr. George ("Rowley") Hill, of Takaymna, who also fought in Sicily under Garibaldi.