AFTER TEN YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 235, 4 October 1928, Page 7

AFTER TEN YEARS.

British Soldier's "Return From The Dead." f —— LOST MEMORY IN U.S.A. (United Service.) LONDON, October 3. The "Daily Mail" publishes an astonishing story of an ex-soldier's return from the dead. It relates how C. H. Peachey went back to his home at, Gloucester after having vanished ten years ago. The man had spent that period in a mental hospital in the United States. He could not remember who he was. In the war Peachey served in the second battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in France f and Salonika. He was wounded in the head while he was with a tank corps in 1917 and a metal plate was substituted for his frontal bone. He was then discharged disabled and joined a steamer for Portland, Maine, in 1918 as a coal trimmer. At Maine Peachey went ashore and disappeared. He was entered as a deserter. His family advertised widely, but had no response. Peachey's mtnd was a complete blank as he wandered about Portland. Finally he was admitted to a mental hospital in that city, where he remained for ten years unable to account for himself. Several operations were performed upon his head and a final one upon his nose. These led to his memory gradually being completely restored. Peachey returned to England. He found strangers occupying his old home, his mother dead, his wife married again, with four children, and his brother partially deaf and dumb. So shocked was the latter by Peachey's reappearance that he recovered his speech to a large degree. When he left the hospital Peachey visited a shipping office at Portland, satisfied the manager as to his bona fides and drew his wages, also £14 salvage money for towing a disabled American ship into port. He is now claiming a renewal of his army pension.