REUNITED AT LAST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19940, 8 May 1928, Page 13

REUNITED AT LAST.

MOTHER MEETS SOLDIER SON. CASE 'OF GEORGE McQUAY. SLIGHT RETURN OF MEMORY. [from our own correspondent.3 SYDNEY, May 3. Mrs. E. Li. McQuay, mother of the New Zealand soldier who lost his memory in 1916 and had remained unidentified in the Callan Park Hospital in Sydney for 11 years, arrived here on Tuesday. Trembling with nervousness, which she tried hard to conceal, Mrs. McQuay almost broke down when confronted by her son. Her identification was positive, and her son remembered. "Oh, mum!" he cried, and both soon were sobbing. It was an affecting meeting after long years of waiting.

The memory of George McQuay—he had been known here as George Brown—came back to a slight extent. His first inquiry, after a lapse of abodt a-quarter of an hour, concerned "Sis." When his mother, tears (if joy in her «yes, showed him photographs of what he had long forgotten was home, and of tho peoplo there, he exclaimed delightedly:— "And what about —, and —, and the —, and—and " Mrs. McQuay could not contain her joy in rediscovering her boy. "Think of it!" she said. "Never a word since 1915; never a sign of George since the landing at Gallipoli! Not to know even that he had been killed, no report of him as 'missing'—just silence. He remembers me —that's the great thing. When I have him home again, among the places and he loved, he'll 'come back.' So many years here, with nobody to prompt him, nobody to care. He was only a number." The doctors at Callan Park think that there is good ground for believing that much of McQuay's mental wreckage may be restored by the influence of old associations. Mother and son will soon leave together for New Zealand. "I am very grateful to the papers," Mrs. McQuay said-- "If it had not been for them I should never have found George."