FOUR FORGOTTEN MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20273, 6 April 1934, Page 7

FOUR FORGOTTEN MEN.

Letters Brought From Devil’s Island. By delivering four letters to tragic families in various European countries, Mr W. Allison-Booth, a man who purposely wrecked himself on the dreaded Devil’s Island, has “ brought back ” four forgotten men. He originally visited the Isle to gain at first-hand the knowledge the whole world craved for . . . the truth about the grim penal settlement. And when he sailed from St Laurent to France he carried with him four human documents. They were all letters from convicts to their wives and sweethearts, first words after years and years of silence. “ My first letter took me to a beautiful chateau outside Nantes, the home of the ragged and unkempt wretch Gaston, who had wished me * Bon voyage ’ at St Laurent! “ For years Gaston’s mother had anxiously waited a letter. Now she lay on her death bed . . . too ill to be shown the letter her son had enclosed for her.” In a little village outside St Omfir a broken-hearted woman received a message from her son. “ She told me its contents. Her boy had written asking his younger brother Pierre to do all he could to bring happiness to his mother.” But the poor woman broke into a terrible fit of laughter. Pierre himself had been sent to Guiana a year ago!