“JOHN WILLIE” FOUND.

Waikato Times, Volume 93, Issue 15311, 11 August 1923, Page 3

“JOHN WILLIE” FOUND.

MISS CAMPBELL MEETS HIM. At last Miss Ethel Campbell (known to many Diggers as “The Angel of Durban”) has found the long sought for “John Willie,” and she is greatly delighted as a result (says a Sydney paper). if “John Willie” was an engine driver when Miss Campbell saw him at Durban, and he promised her a ride on his engine, if she ever came to Australia. But “John Willie" cannot fullll his promise now because he doesn’t drive engines now. Ho is n policeman! lie left the railway on his return from the war and joined the force. His real name is Harold Kemp, and he is attached to the Artarmon station as a constable. Ho and his charming little wife and their bonnie 18-months-old baby boy live in a pretty little cottage in a secluded street at Artarmon, and it was there that Miss Campbell met him. “I cannot express the pleasure 1 experienced at meeting him once again,” she told a “Daily Telegraph” representative. “I was nearly giving up hope of ever seeing him again, but something kept telling me that 1 would meet him before I left Australia.” Same Old “John Willie.’” “He is the same old, happy 'John Willie’ I knew at Durban even though he is married,” Miss Campbell remarked with a smile. “He seemed as pleased at meeting me again as I was of meeting him, and'we spent the whole evening talking about everything under the sun. I had a really most delightful time. "It was practically the first Australian home I have had the privilege of being in since I have been here, and all I can say is that if every home is likOj ‘John Willie's,’ well, Australians must be happy folk.” Miss Campbell explained how she came to meet the much discussed “John Willie.” An Original Anzac. “He was of the original Anzacs, and was wounded in the early montns of the Gallipoli campaign,” she said. “He returned to Australia on the troopship Star of England, which called at Durban, and it was their that 1 ■first came in contact with- him. He was one of the few Australian soldiers I met, and I never forgot him. A big man—he is Gft. 4in. in height—with a striking personality, he was one of the most popular men on the boat. “I saw him a few years later when he re-enlisted, and once more returned to the fight. He was captured by the Germans in France and made a prisoner of war, and we met again when he returned to Australia at the end of the war.” Miss Campbell said she would see “John Willie” before she left Australia, and when she went away she would make him promise to write to her. “The Angel of Durban” said that she had “The Daily Telegraph” to thank for finding “John Willie,” and she was very grateful. Ever, since “The Daily Telegraph” had published a story about him she had received many letters informing her where he was to be found. But it appeared that more than one Digger had the sobriquet of “John Willie,” for several of the men she had been told to see were the wrong ones. The other day,; however, the real “John WiUie’s” sister had written to her, saying that she had noticed in the “Daily Telegraph” that Miss Campbell wanted to see “John Willie,” and that she was positive her brother was the man.

“She gave a description of him,” Miss Campbell remarked, “and 1 knew from it that I had at last found ‘John Willie.’ ”