LIFE OF ADVENTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20766, 8 January 1931, Page 11

LIFE OF ADVENTURE.

SERVICE IN MANY WARS.

ENGLISHMAN'S EXPERIENCES

INCIDENTS IN FOREIGN LANDS

Engineer, traveller, trader, tea planter and soldier are some of the occupations followed during his career by Mr. A. M. Hamlin, who arrived by the IJlimaroa yesterday to settle in New Zealand after a life of adventure spent in almost every tropical and semi-tropical country in the world.

The son of a British Colonial Office surveyor, Mr. Hamlin has always had, in his own words, "the wanderlust in his veins." He has seen service in almost every war and skirmish during the past 20 years, and is the holder of 13 war medals awarded to him by many different nations. One of his most unique experiences was being attached to a military mission at, the time of the Graeco-Turkish War of 1910-1911. Prior to the Great War Mr. Hamlin was attached to the Italian military forces in Tripoli, which were engaged in a campaign against the warlike Senussi tribes. In the early part of the war his company was badly cut up by a nomadic tribe of the Senussi, but Mr. Hamlin and three companions managed to escape with two camels and two Arab ponies. The party spent seven days of privation wandering the desert before reaching supplies of food and water. To add to their misery, induced by pangs of thirst and hunger, the blowing sand continually worked inside their clothes, rubbing the skin from their legs and backs. Mr. Hamlin then joined the British Expeditionary Force in Egypt. He received a fracture of the arm in his first campaign. Mr. Hamlin was later appointed to the Allied Military Mission and served with the Greek, Serbian and British armies in the Balkans. As a member of the Allied Military Mission he was with the first British party to enter Constantinople after the cessation of hostilities. In 1920 Mr. Hamlin went to South Africa, where his father had some property and spent three years surveying the Belgian Congo and Uganda borders. He later joined an exploration party organised by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to search for oil in Macedonia, but when the Greeks and Turks were fighting around Smyrna in 1923 he went to Athens to join the Greeks. The Greeks, however, refused the services ot foreigners and Mr. Hamlin had to sleep in the streets of Athens for three days among thousands of refugees before he secured a passage in a steamer to Alexandria.

From Alexandria Mr. Hamlin again went to Africa and joined the Public Works Department of Tanganyika. Subsequently he tried his hand as a trader and as a tea planter in Ceylon. About two years ago Mr. Hamlin spent some time at Opua, in the Bay of Islands, and he has now come to settle at Mercury Bay. "I will lead a simple life and keep a few chickens," he said. "After leading an open-air life for so many years I have no use for a city life."