SAPPER SURPRISED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1940, Page 6

SAPPER SURPRISED

BILLETED IN SAME ENGLISH VILLAGE. AS TN GREAT WAR. “I wondered many a time what part of the Old Country we'd land in, and had anybody suggested it would be the same town in which I had such a good time 23 years ago. I'd have thought it just crazy," said Sapper Percy Pincott, of the Royal Australian Engineers, aged 44, and 6ft 3in in height. He landed with the rest of the R.A.E. and found himself' billeted in the same Hampshire town that he came to 23 years ago when sent from France to a hospital in the town to recuperate from a gas attack. "When we boarded a train at the port where we landed." he added, “I had no idea where we were being sent and after a long journey the train stopped at a station whose identity is obliterated. It was an officer shouting. ■You all get out here,’ that roused me from a doze. I could hardly believe my eyes, and asked a porter to tell me the name of the station. He told me. and all 1 was capable of remarking was, 'Well, by gum!’ I said to the woman behind the bar, ‘Hello, Minnie, don’t you recognise me?' She gave me a freezing kind of look, but when I revealed by identity she nearly fainted with astonishment. After that we celebrated.” “Minnie” is the wife of Mr Bill Franklyn, licensee of The Bakers’ Arms, and is Sapper Pincott’s sister-in-law, for Sapper Pincott’s’sister married Mrs Franklyn’s brother, Mr Sidney Collins. Sapper Pincott was born at Farncombe, Surrey, and as soon as he took his discharge from the Navy as a first, class boy in August. 1914.’ ho joined the Middlesex Regiment and served throughout the war. In October, 1919. lie emigrated to Australia. He look up sheep farming and married an Australian girl in 1922.