Escape From New Guinea

MR. and Mrs. F. H. Conroy, of Rabaul, have added to the long list of remarkable stories of escape from New Guinea. They met again the other day in Brisbane after a series of adven tures, which, in any times but these, would call for, at least, a series of news paper articles and a nation-wide broad cast.

Mrs. Conroy was evacuated by plane, while her husband was away from their plantation; and, when the Japanese invasion came, she lost all trace of him.

She went to Brisbane and, although she had had no previous experience of fac tory life, she went to work on munitions while she waited and watched all New Guinea news in the hope that some of it might have some bearing on her hus band’s whereabouts.

Back in the Territory, Mr. Conroy was not letting the grass grow under his feet. He was one of a party of men who removed a small steamer from beneath the noses of the Japs; and, because he once had been a chief engineer, it naturally fell to his lot to assume, with the aid of a school atlas, the responsibilities of navigating officer!

These he obviously carried out with great success, for he and his team landed their boat-load of refugees safely in an Aus tralian port.

Mrs, Conroy had read of the exploit, but did not know until after they had met in Brisbane that one of the princi pals of the drama was her missing husband.

Rev. Clifford Welch, previously LMS missionary at Nauru, recently was mar ried to an English girl, and now is sta tioned in Auckland, NZ.