"Toby" Obrien

Killed in Action at Lae

Prom a Special Correspondent YOU have not recorded the death of one of the old-timers of the New Guinea goldfield Toby O’Brien, killed in action.

Toby was in the Air Force in the 1914- 18 show, with a commission, and he received serious wounds from a phos phorous bullet. He went to New Guinea, and was for years in the Administration survey, being engaged in later years with Bulham, Ecclestone and the others, on the survey of the Salamaua-Wau road.

I remember, just before the war, flying over his camp, which was perched up near the “Summit.”

He came down to Sydney early in 1940 and enlisted in the 17th Battalion, as a

private. He rapidly rose to become Company QM Sergeant, and he went through the siege of Tobruk then Tel el-Bisa and El Alamein, and he saw the whole Middle East show through.

He felt that he should be back in the country that he knew, and where his knowledge should be of value, I met him the day he arrived, and he was full of joy, greeting me with: “Well, old man, we made it at last—it’s good to be home.”

He was killed the first day at Lae, when his company area was bombed—a great loss, as he was one of the old team and was also one of the most popular men in the battalion.

Private F. Swan, of Apia, who went overseas in the NZ Medical Corps and was taken prisoner in Greece, has now been repatriated from a German prison camp, and recently returned to Samoa.