NEVER CAME HOME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19732, 29 December 1926, Page 10

NEVER CAME HOME

A VOLUNTARY EXILE E ’ | WENT TO WAR AT 15 ■ r 5 AUCKLANDER WHO LIVES IN r PARIS 3 t There is said to be btit one’ permaf nent resident of Paris who can claim - New Zealand birth. Ho is Mr. Clari R. Tatton, son of Mrs. Kato Tatton, of Great North Road, Avondale. Twelve years ago, a mere strip of a boy, he q tried to bluff a recruiting officer in i Auckland that he was of military age- . The bluff failed, and Tatton departed for Australia, where he joined up and t left very early in the war for Egypt. Ho saw service on Gallipoli and in , Mesopotamia, later going to France with the Aussies. 0 During the war ho met and fell in I ! love with a Belgian nurse, a charming r I sister who had worked under the di.rection of Nurse Cavell. A happy mar- . i riage gave Tatton a permanent intcr- / '■ cst in France, and when the Hun was finally routed he took his discharge there. Since that day, Tatton has not r seen his beloved New Zealand. An . old boy of St. John’s College, Taranaki, this voluntary exile is always overjoyed to meet New Zealanders who happen to be in Paris. There is nothr ing he likes more than to spend an hour or so yarning about the places > of his boyhood. 3 The announcement in Parisian news3 papers that Ted Scott, New Zealand lightweight boxer, was to figure? in a bout, prompted Tatton to write a let- | ter, inviting the visitor to call on him. Scott who was on the literary staff of the Wellington “Evening Post” for some years and later a reporter on th? staff of the' “Sydney Morning Herald,” before he turned his pugilistic experience to account and donned gloves as a professional, was delighted to know that an ex-Aucklander was living in ( Paris. However, so far away from home, he' felt somewhat dubious as to , the validity of his correspondent’s claim to New Zealand birth, and was half prepared to meet an imposter. Tatton, likewise, had it in his mind when he wrote his letter that this glove’ artist, billed as a New Zealander, . | might in reality hail from any old I place at all. So each of the strangers I in tho far-away country mot in a more lor less reserved frame of mind. Each was prepared to trip tho other up. if possible, and prove conclusively that hn simply couldn’t be a <4 dinkum” New Zealander. At first glance, however, each re'eog- , nisod the other as a New Zealander. There is no mistaking tho colonial type. From the first they were’ the best of friends. Tatton, who has done well for himself in the French capital, is secretary to ono of the biggest firms of diamond merchants in Paris. ' He’ lives in a pretty villa, situated in a fashionable suburb, and his home is ; always open to fellow Now Zealanders . whose acquaintance he makes in the i gay capital. Tattnn is a happy and . ■ prosperous man. The ono big regret 'in his life’ is fhat he has not seen - Maoriland since he left it as a youth ; of 15 years. His memories are all of : Auckland and tho seaside suburb-- . I where he spent happy days as a boy. .