OLD SOLDIER'S LUCK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23966, 16 May 1941, Page 11

OLD SOLDIER'S LUCK

WINNER IN VETERANS' HOME "NOT GOING TO LEAVE" The winner of the first prize of £2OOO in the Put and Take art union drawn yesterday is Mr. P. H. Brown, aged 82. who has no relatives in New Zealand and has lived at the Veterans' Home, Mount Roskill, for the last two years. Giving a false age. he enlisted with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in the Great War and served for three years. Mr. Brown did not realise his good fortune until some time after he had rcaS that the pseudonym "Veteran" was on the winning ticket. All the other inmates of the home had decided that it must be one of their

number who had drawn the first prize but it was not until they had eliminated everybody but one of the veterans who was out that Mr. Brown suddenly realised that the winning ticket was his.

Greatly delighted with his luck, and firmly expressing the intention of "shouting" for his companions in the home. .Mr. Broun said he had still to decide what he was going to do with the money. One of his hopes was that lie might' bo able to find a son whom he had last heard of as being in a ship on the Indian run and bring him to New Zealand. "I will have to think it all out," he said. '"I am certainly not going to leave the home. This is the first money 1 have ever won in an art union and it takes some deciding to know what to do. The ticket was one of the last two left in the shop where I bought it.