“BACK FROM DEAD”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 868, 11 January 1930, Page 26

“BACK FROM DEAD”

THREE SOLDIER BROTHERS RETURN CHANCE DISCOVERY Maggie Walker, an auburn-haired Scots girl, was the happiest of all the passengers who arrived at Euston from Glasgow one recent morning. She was still thinking of the glorious week-end she had spent with the three brothers, whom she believed, until a few days ago, to have been killed in the war. Maggie is employed as a cook by Miss Grade Fields, and in the actress’s dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre the story of the Scots girl’s discovery of her brothers was told to a “Daily Chronicle” representative. An orphan as a tiny girl, Maggie was placed by the Glasgow Parish Council in a home. She never knew the happiness of family life, but although she was separated from her three brothers, Alexander, James and John, she kept in touch with them, and dreamed of the time when they might all be together. “I was a child during the war years,” said Maggie. “I don’t know even now quite what happened. “My letters did not reach my brothers, and theirs did not reach me. Then I was told that all my brothers had been killed. “It took me a little while to realise that I was quite alone in the world. “I left Scotland in November, 1918, and I have been in London ever since.” On every Armistice Day Maggie has thought, during the two minutes’ silence, of the brothers who were “killed in the war.” And during all the years that have elapsed since they left the Army, they have been looking for Maggie. “As soon as my brothers went back to Glasgow after the war they made inquiries about me. They were toid. I do not know why, that I was in Canada or America. End of Search “They advertised for news of me la American papers. Then, as a last resort, they advertised in a Glasgow weekly newspaper, and someone sent me the cutting. “I W'as so excited and so happy when I found that my brothers were alive, that I telephoned to Miss Fields at the theatre, and begged her to let me go to Glasgow for the week-end. She not only told me to go, but gave me the money for the fare, and even lent me some of her own lovelv clothes to wear.

“I hadn’t seen the boys for 20 years,” said Maggie, “but they knew me and I knew them, and it was a wonderful meeting. “Trade in Kilmarnock is so slack that they won’t be able to come to see me, but we are going to exchange letters every week. “And I met their wives, too. I’ve got my own brothers back, and some more relatives as well, and I shan’t ever be alone again,” Maggie said, as tears and happy smiles mingled.