FAKE A.I.F. GENERAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 560, 12 January 1929, Page 14

FAKE A.I.F. GENERAL

DECEIVES CANADA DISH-WASHER IN QUEBEC At present the records branch of the Defence Department in Melbourne is engaged in searching through files of the A.I.F. for any traces of a person called Charles H. Gough. There were Goughs in the A.1.F., but this particular name is associated with a man who succeeded in bringing off an amazing hoax in Canada, where he masqueraded for a time as “Brigadier-General Charles H. Gough, D. 5.0., D.C.M.,” late of the A.I.F. Just to hand, says the Sydney “Sun,” is a copy of a Canadian newspaper which features a full page article by the self-styled general, together with his photograph (in civilian clothes) and a fanciful drawing of him washing dishes while his mind envisions charging cavalry and other war scenes. The article is entitled “The General Washes Dishes,” and in soul-stirring language it tells how the “general,” finding himself penniless in Quebec, took the job of dish-washer at the Chateau Frontenae. And it was while he was at this job. he tells, that an old war comrade met him, and divulged to the Press that a real general was working as a menial in a big hotel. The “general” tells his story graphically, and the Canadian people, for a time, lapped it up greedily, and soon made his path an easy one—until inquiries failed to satisfy some people as to his bona-fides. For no one knows of a Brigadier-General Charles H. Gough, of the A.1.F., and you will not find his name in the list of winners of the D.S.O. The Canadian newspaper recorded his war story as he told it. He said that he joined the British Army as a drummer boy, served as a boy in the Boer War, won the D.C.M. for carrying dispatches through the Khyber Pass, won the same decoration at Gallipoli with the A.1.F., and graduated from the rank of SergeantMajor (at the outbreak of the Great War) to that of Brigadier-General in 1917.

It stated that he was 44 years of age—so that he would have been 32 when he won the D. 5.0., was made Brigadier-General, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. And he was only 24 when lie made his dash through the Khyber Pass in 190 S. Why he should have been dashing through the Pass at that comparatively peaceful time is not stated. The “General’s” story finishes on a simple note: “And since there is little need lor generals these days (he says), much less ex-generals, I have come and settled away here in Toronto. I have my saxophones back. I shall play for others to dance.” But that was written before anyone had, in the language of the streer, “woken up to him.” It was a big hoax, and the “general” must still be laughing at it. For as, suredly he has a seuse of humour.