“BACK FROM THE DEAD”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22422, 17 November 1934, Page 22

“BACK FROM THE DEAD”

FOUR YEARS IN A TRANCE A man who has lost four years of his life—during which time he was sunk in a complete traih —is slowly but surely winning his way back to health, under the constant care of his wife and two children. He is Victor Stanley Cleave, aged 39, of Folkestone, England, an employee of the Southern Railway. During the war he served for three years in France with the East Keut Regiment, being wounded early in 1918 by a bomb dropped from an aeroplane. From that time he became an increasingly tired man, until a point was reached where he would fall asleep over his meals, or even standing up. In May, 1928, he was admitted to the Ministry of Pensions Hospital, at Cosham, Hampshire, and from then until Whitsun, 1032, he did not awake again. Then came a day when his wife was informed that he had opened hia eyes and spoken. She rushed to see him, and be answered her when she spoke to him tearfully. Ever since, his improvement has been marked. He slowly recovered the use of his limbs, and now he is back at his home on leave of absence. “ I am as a man who has come back to life from the dead, finding that the world has changed,” he says. “At first I did not recognise my children, who were only babies when I left. My illness was diagnosed as a failure of the whole nervous system-"