ORPHAN OF FLANDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22867, 23 October 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

ORPHAN OF FLANDERS

ISLAND'S MYSTERY GIRL RESCUED BY SOLDIER BROUGHT HOME WHEN A BABY On the Atlantic-swept island of Soav, only one mile from Skye, I have discovered the strange story of a girl brought to the island twenty-one years ago. writes an Inverness-sliire correspondent of the Daily Express, London. All sixty of the islanders are nativeborn and bred except one, the "Belgian girl," aged twenty-two. She is said to have been brought as a baby from Flanders in 191 G. They gave her a name. Janet Blaeklin, but even Sandy Campbell, her foster-father, cannot explain how she got there. Sandy told me: "It goes back to 1916, when my brother, Kenneth, was serving on the Western Front. When he came home on leave he brought with him a baby girl. "Kenneth told my father that the baby was the only one of the Belgian family to escape when a shell wrecked thcirhome. 'I hadn't the heart to leave the poor wee thing there, so 1 brought her with me,' said Kenneth. "Kenneth went back to war, leaving the lassie with my mother to bring up. Kenneth was killed soon afterwards." On the death of Sandy's mother, she asked him to trtke care of the child as his own, and he agreed. He has done so ever since, although he is now married and has five children of his own. "She is as much to me as any of them," Sandy said. "My wife is devoted to her, too." The Isle of Soar is a world of its own. There is 110 telephone on the island. Once a week Sandy Campbell, who is the island boatman, goes across to Mallaig and fetches the mails.