BACK FROM THE "DEAD."

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 22 November 1916, Page 3

BACK FROM THE "DEAD."

| hermit soldier who lived in GERMAN-HELD WOOD. i 1 This war has produced many ro- ■ mances, but it lias revealed none more I extraordinary than that of Rifleman | Henry Robinson Lupton, King’s Royal | Rifles, who for twenty-two months i lived the life of a hermit in a wood in ! France in the midst of the enemy, and j who surrendered at last only through I ill-health. | Nearly the whole of that time be j was mourned by his mother as dead, i but, being now a prisoner in Ger- | many, he has written to his mother I telling her of his experiences and re- | porting that he is well and is being | well treated. i Being a member or the original ; British Expeditionary Force, he took | part in the retreat from Mans. Offic- : ial notice of his death was received ; by his mother at Backlane, Horsforth. i a village near Leeds, on Nov. 30, 1915, and only last week she inserted an i ! “In Memoriam” notice in a local week I ly newspaper. < In his letter, which bears the dare lof August 16, 1916, Lupton explains j that he was on the march with his ] battalion on August 24, 1914, when he ! was taken ill and had to see the docI tor. As he was very weak, he was : left in a village with some eleven j other sick comrades. ■ After resting two hours they were I surrounded by Germans. But as he did not wish to become a prisoner, he escaped and rigged out in civilian clothes roamed about the district, hiding in the forest all day, and emerging at dusk to ask for food. In this way he dodged the enemy for twenty-two months. But he was | finally obliged through illness an<s \lack of food to give himself up to the Germans. Since June 11, 1916, he has been a prisoner of war, and is now a: Werden-Ruhd, Warden, Germany.