BOY WHO TURNED MOSLEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20922, 11 July 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

BOY WHO TURNED MOSLEM.

YOUNG ENGLISHMAN'S FATE. DEATH AS "UNKNOWN" MAN. Kipling might; have imagined this story —the story of a young Englishman who went East during the war, became a Mohammedan, and was never heard of by his family for 13 years. Nearly sixteen years ago —in October, 1915—a boy who lived in Groftlane, Seaford, Sussex, joined the army. His name was James Wallace Earl, and ho was only 16 years old. He went into the Ordnance Corps, and after serving in France he was drafted to Mesopotamia.

Young Earl used to write home regularly to his mother and father until September, 1918. Then his mother died —and he never wrote again. The rest of his story was told lately to a Sunday Express correspondent by his father, Mr. Alfred Henry Earl. " A few days ago," he said, "we had a letter irom Preston Hall Hospital at Aylesbury stating that a man by the name of Earl had died there, and had been buried as unknown. After the burial it was found from his personal belongings that his home was at Seaford. He was my son. " On going through his papers it was possible to trace how he had been living. After the war he joined the teaching staff at the Royal Iraq Military College at Baghdad. He taught there until last August, when he was taken ill with tuberculosis, and was sent back to England.'' The doctors at the Aylesbury Hospital said that Earl had become a Mohammedan, and was completely Easternised. He told them that his one desire was to be dropped on to the sands of the desert. And ho apparently refused to divulge anything of the whereabouts of his parents or friends.