“DEAD” MAN ENLISTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1938, Page 10

“DEAD” MAN ENLISTS

MOURNED FOR FIVE WEEKS. Mourned as dead for five weeks by his parents, David Rex Paton, a 22-year-old insurance agent, for whom the Kirkcudbright lifeboat made a dramatic search off the Wigtownshire coast, has been found by his father at the Berwick-on-Tweed depot of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Paton, the only son of Mr and Mrs David Paton, of Staveley, near Kendal, took out. a boat on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of October off the Isle of Whithorn. Later the same day the boat was found with only one oar in it.

“Although we feared the worst," .Mr Paton, Senr. said, “I never really gave up hope, and visited Army depots in Scotland and the North of England, carrying my son’s photograph with me. “On Wednesday afternoon the recruiting officer at Berwick told me they had no one of the name of Paton, but when I produced the photograph he said: ‘Why, that is David.’ “It appears that my son had enlisted using his Christian name as a surname. I obtained special leave for him until Monday.

“His explanation is rather hazy. He remembers the boat capsizing and his struggle almost exhausted, to the shore. From that point he appears to have lost his memory.” It is understood that the son will stay on in the Army.