LONG DEEMED DEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 476, 4 October 1928, Page 9

LONG DEEMED DEAD

SOLDIER REAPPEARS AN ASTONISHING STORY (United Service) LONDON, Wednesday. 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 10 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 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. MIND A BLANK At Maine Peachey went ashore and disappeared. He was entered as a deserter. His family advertised widely, but had no response. Peachey’s mind was a complete blank, as he wandered about Portland. Finally he was admitted to a mental hospital in that city, where he remained for 10 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. WIFE WED AGAIN 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 Peachey’s brother by his 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 bonafides and drew his wages, also £l4 salvage money for towing a disabled American ship into port. He is now claiming a renewal of his army pension.