MEMORIAL SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 August 1942, Page 4

MEMORIAL SERVICE

LATE SERGEANT L. E. POLE. A. memorial service to the late Sergeant Wireless Operator Leslie Ernest Pole, of the R.N.Z.A.F., whose death occurred in an aircraft accident in England, was conducted recently at St John’s Presbyterian Church, Hawera. The only son of Mr and Mrs E. Pole, of Hawera, Sergeant Pole was 26 years of age. He was born in Hawera, but educated in Mastertori, being an old boy of the Masterton West School and the Wairarapa High School. An enthusiastic radio amateur, Sergeant Pole, before the war, was prominent in the affairs of the Hawera Radio Society and operated his own transmitter with the call sign 2MN. He played tennis, golf and badminton and was a member of the Egmont Alpine Club. At the outbreak of war he was the second Hawera volunteer in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and on the completion of his training at a South Island air station he was posted for six months as a link trainer instructor at a Taranaki air station. He left for overseas and for some time had been engaged in operational flights over enemy-occupied France and Germany.