T.B. VICTIM

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6603, 23 May 1925, Page 5

T.B. VICTIM

TURNED ADRIFT IN SYDNEY. PENSION CANCELLED WHILE IN HOSPITAL Again does “Smith’s Weekly” appeal to Sir Heaton Rhodes, N.Z. Minister for Defence, to come to the aid of a stricken soldier.

Last week a case was stated on behalf of R. D. Cochran, a T.B. soldier, who had been turned down by the Pensions Department of N.Z. This week the plea is for Gilbert Godfrey, a young Gisborne man. Godfrey served three years abroad with the Third Auckland Regt. and was twice badly shellshocked in France, once when he and some others were blown out- of a ruined farmhouse. The second experience wrecked his nerves. He was finally sent home to New Zealand early in 1918. He went off at 18 strong and healthy, and came back a young-old man of 21, fit only for the lightest work when his twitching limbs should have quieted down. REDUCING THE PENSION After hospital treatment Godfrey took his discharge on full pension, getting away to the country, where he hoped to regain his health. Twelve months the Government allowed him to run on £8 13/4 a month, then examined him and reduced the amount by half. This continued for another year and was again reduced by half. He was drawing 10s a week then, and, weak from influenza arid debility, he came to Australia in the belief that change, of climate would help him to recover. After he had been clerking at Lithgow some months he coughed himself into hemmorhage. Unacquainted with the regulations which permit ex-sol-diers to apply to the Repat. for medical treatment he paid for it himself from his own small store of money. After two and a half months he left the hospital in a much weakened state, without an idea as to the real nature of his malady. The doctor had withheld from him the news that he had fallen to the scourge of T.8.l

CROWNING BLOW And, while he lay seriously ill in that hospital at Lithgow, the N.Z. Government cancelled his pension! And that without medical examination at all. At the moment of its cancellation he was in worse condition than when it was granted him, and more sorely needed it because he was friendless, and almost- penniless. Twenty-three days after the pension was taken from him he came to Sydney and saw a Repat. doctor. He was hurried into Prince Alfred Hospital and X-ray photos taken of his lungs. They revealed T.B. Repat. at once cabled the N.Z. Government asking that it meet the cost of Godfrey’s treatment. A cable came back denying that his illness was war-caused and refusing to accept the unfortunate ex-soldier as a responsibility.

Repat. then quickly got him off its hands. It turned him over to the Red Cross, which body has maintained him at Bodlington Sanatorium for nineteen months, and at Woodville Hospital, Randwick, for five months. New Zealand has disowned him. Australian Repat. officials have stated that if he were an Australian soldier the circumstances of his case would entitle him to a full pension. As a member of the N.Z. Returned Soldiers’ Association he twice by letter appealed to that body to advice him what State or private charitable aid he might apply for. His letters weren’t even answered.

Until Sir Heaton Rhodes (Minister for Defence) cares to look into the facts of this man’s case he must eke out the rest of his life a pauper.

His reward for offering his body on the altar of patriotism.