CONSTANT LOVER’S REWARD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2325, 6 September 1921, Page 4

CONSTANT LOVER’S REWARD.

A TWENTY-YEAR’S SEARCH,

YOUNG GREEK’S ODYSSEY,

True love’s course never does run smoothly, according to the old saw.

In the strange case of Lieutenant Marcus Sakarfos, of the Greek Royal Navy, and a little English maiden, Cupid led the officer a wildly zig-zag, tantalising chase from tremulous bliss to the depths of despair, .then through the perils of the battlefields of Europe, on to happiness again after many \eais, and landed him at last first in ono New York' prison cell and then in another.

The details of Sakarfos’ adventures are vouched for by Captain Joseph I’. Cromwell, who; as .judge advocate at a courtinartial on Governor’s Island, headquarters of the Military Department of the East, obtained the Greek ex-naval officer’s conviction as a deserter from the United States Army, and now that duty accomplished, is seeking to have the sentence commuted. It was a score of years ago that Sakarfos, just graduated from the Greek Royal Naval Academy, met the English miss, then a schoolgirl who, with her parents, >vas visiting Athens. It was-a case of love at first sight for both of them, but she was so young that her father and mother would not hear of her engagement, let alone her marriage to the arduous, Athenian, and hurried tier home to England.

The youthful lovers kept up a correspondence for some time, but just tis Sakarfos had received his commission as a first lieutenant the letters from Mary—that was her name—-stopped. He journeyed England to find out why, and bent on making her bis bride. He learned to liis chagrin that she bad left for the United States. That was in 1011. Resolved to liiul her at all costs, he returned to his native land to resign his commission, but was held in the service for the Balkan war.

CUPID RELENTS

At last in 1913 lie was free to pursue liis quest, and did; but, though he searched all New York, where he had been given to understand his boyhood sweetheart had gone, he could find no trace of her; and in despair he enlisted in tho army as a private, and was sent to the war with the 52nd Railway Artillery, which went through several battles.

In 1919 he was drafted back to New York, and petitioned for liis discharge, but was kept with the colours and sent to Fortress Monroe, in Virginia, where lie was promoted to be master gunner.

Then, during a furlough, he came to New York, still obsessed with longing for his lost love, and figuratively almost the fjrst person he met was Mary. It was purely a chance meeting, and she had no idea that lie was in America. This time he won her, and they married. Nevertheless, lie could not obtain his discharge from the army, so when in due course he learned that Marcus Sakasfos, junior, had come to town he- could not resist, and failing to obtain furlough in the regular way, simply took “French leave.”

He did not return to Fortress Monroe, and might have stayed free in celt ini tel y had he not got into trouble with fbe police for reckless driving of an automobile and been sent to prison for 25 days. As it was. when he emerged from the civil prison the military authorities took charge of him. He gave the guard the slip, but was recaptured, and now is a prisoner on Governor’s Island, serving a sentence for double desertion.