LOST MEMORY ROMANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20323, 3 February 1928, Page 3

LOST MEMORY ROMANCE.

TEN LONG BLANK YEARS. AMAZING STORY OF THE WAR SOLDIER LOSES HIS NAME. The most amazing story of the war has had to wait 10 years to be told. It is the story of a man who lost his name, his identity!’ his nationality, his native tongue, and spent 10 years as another man, speaking another language. The hero of this almost incredible romance is a Swede named Gustaf Duner, who until a few months ago thought that he was a. Canadian called de Montalt. A few weeks ago, through a remarkable series of coincidences, he picked up the threads of his Icrl life and found a mother and brother whom he did not know existed. Gustaf Duner was bum in 1880 in Sweden. His father was a professor at the famous University of Upsala. From his youth ■ a love of war and adventure was 'second nature to him, and he became an officer in the Swedish army, but that did not look like leading to any feats of arms of the kind he wanted. Accordingly, when the Boer war broke out nearly 30 years ago, he enlisted in the British Armv and went to South Africa, where ho fought, with such gallantry throughout the campaign that he, earned a British commission for himself. After that he fought in all the wars which broke out iu Europe, and on the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 he was once more an officer in the British Army fighting in France. A TERRIBLE EXPLOSION. Just before the New Year of 1917 the strange, occurrence took place which cast a shadow of mystery over the next 10 years of Duner’s life. He was seated with other officers in a dug-out in France when suddenly the warning was given that a mine explosion was imminent. _ Duner picked up the nearest coat, which he thought was his, and had just time to thrust an arm into one sleeve when a terrible explosion wrecked the dug-out. Duner threw himself to the ground, and (hen felt himself being lifted bodily into the air. Then, he lost consciousness. When he came to in a hospital far behind the lines him memory was a blank. Every detail of his former life had been wiped out as if a sponge had been drawn across a slate. The nurses and doctors in the hospital, however, called him “Captain de Montalt,’’ and when he asked why he was shown the coat he had been putting on at the time of the explosion. In the pocket were a letter and other documents, which seemed to prove that he was a Canadian officer bearing that name. There wre no clues to the whereabouts of relatives or friends, and all attempts to find them came to nothing. COAT TAKEN BY MISTAKE. Duner spoke English perfectly, so he accepted the evidence of the coat, calling himself Captain de Montalt. The truth, although Duner did not know it, was that the real Captain de Montalt had been blown to pieces by the explosion. Duner had taken his coat by mistake. Now began 10 years of mystery. But romance had not finished with this modern soldier of fortune. “ Captain de Montalt,” who had been only slightly injured by the explosion, resigned his commission and joined the R.A.F. as a recruit. It was not long before he had distinguished himself as an airman, and he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Then came a crash while flying over the lines which incapacitated him completely from all further participation in war. Captain de Montalt returned to London to settle down on the 100 per cent, pension which the Government gave him, and, incidentally, to perform a task which had been laid on him. Not long before his crash a young officer who was a friend of his had been standing close to him when a shell burst and blew off both his legs. As he lav dying in de MontalUs arms, he made the latter promise to visit his sister, who was in London. This de Montalt did, and out of the pathetic duty sprang a romance which culminated in his marriage to the charming young Englishwoman who was the dead man’s sister. Then a period of idyllic happiness began, with, however, one cloud in the sky —the doubt which lingered at the back of his mind that he was not entitled to bear the name that he had taken. AN AMAZING DISCOVERY. One day he had a shock. He heard some people in a crowd talking a foreign language, ■ and to his astonishment he found that he understood them ! Shaken to the depths of his being, he asked what the language was, and found that it was Swedish. At once he began on a new avenue of inquiry into the mystery of his name. Now lie was not even sure of his nationality. But he could make no headway. Then came the most amazing coincidence of all. The ex-soldier was sitting one day in a Government department, awaiting an interview with some official about his pension. A number of foreign reference books were on a shelf near him, and his eye fell on one—the Statskalenderen, which is the Army List of the Swedish Army. Naturally interested in all things Swedish, he picked it up and ran his eye down the columns of officers in the Swedish army. Suddenly the name Gustaf Duner stared him in the face. The hero of the story was staggered. The name was familiar, elusively, inexplicably familiar. He began to remember things in a confused way. In a fever of excitement he wrote to the address given opposite the name. Promptly came the reply:—“ Herr Gustaf Duner was unfortunately killed on the Western front at the end of 1916,” said the writer. “ 1 am his brother.” There followed details of the life of this Gustaf Duner, and, like a flash of light, the curtain fell from Duner’s past. He and his wife hurried to Stockholm, where they had deliriously joyful meeting with his mother and brother, who had given him up as dead for 10 years.