LOST FOR SEVEN YEARS

Waipa Post, Volume 41, Issue 3184, 5 August 1930, Page 3

LOST FOR SEVEN YEARS

WAR HERO RECOGNISED BY BROTHER.

A man who for seven years has been lost to his relatives suffering from loss of memory due to war experience has been found in dramatic circumstances. He is Victor Roberts, D.C.M., and bar, an accountant, aged 35, formerly living at Dartford, Kent. Roberts, a pensioned soldier who was riddled with bullets and gassed at Gallipoli, was believed to be dead. His description in 1923 was broadcast and circularised. Depressed because of their long and xmsuccessful search, Roberts's family moved to South Africa, and twelve months ago a brother, Albert Roberts, having served his time in the South African police, returned and settled at Southend. One day he was walking on the sea front. A shabbily dressed man rode toward him on a bicycle. "I stepped into the middle of the road," Mr Albert Roberts said. "The man on the bicycle seemed familiar. I said to him, ' Excuse me, aren't you Victor? ' He got off his machine, and replied in a dazed sort of way. 'Yes, I am. Surely you are my brother!'" Both men were in a state of collapse after the meeting. They went home' together, and Victor Roberts, as a result of meeting his brother, gradually recalled old times, but he cannot remember how he disappeared in 1923. When Victor Roberts was demobilised he was granted a pension, but for seven years he has not drawn a penny of it. 1