Perry-Windsor Wedding

Three Youngsters Helped

By Ng

Memorial Scholarships

r I ''HIS photo is of Lois Atkins, one of A the three children of New Guinea residents who were awarded the New Guinea Memorial Scholarship in Victoria in 1953. The other two children are Andrew Vial and Gillian Spensley.

Lois, the daughter of Pastor and Mrs.

A. S. Atkins, was 2\<z when she was evacuated with her mother to Australia from New Guinea at the end of 1941. The family had been 14 years in NG as SDA missionaries.

Pastor Atkins stayed behind and after the Japs landed he, with Mr. Trevor Collett and about

40 other Europeans, em . . tried to get away in two SDA mission boats. They were sighted off the coast of New Britain by a Jap destroyer, but before the Japs destroyed the boats the men jumped over board and swam ashore.

Pastor Atkins became too ill to make his way down the coast on foot and told the other men to leave him to find refuge m a native village. Mr. Collett refused and stayed with him.

Pastor Atkins eventually died in a

Japanese hospital at Kokopo and Mr Collett was lost on the Montevideo Maru.

The rest of the party eventually reached Australia after much hardship.

A NDREW is the son of the late Mr.

Leigh Vial and Mrs. Marjory Vial who now lives in Melbourne. Leigh Vial was an ADO in New Guinea District Services Department before the war.

When the Japs came into the war he enlisted in the RAAF and was posted to coastwatching work for the Air Force near Salamaua. where he relayed behind the-llnes information to Moresby. For this work he was awarded the US Dis tinguished Service Cross.

He was lost in April 1943 when the US plane in which he was travelling was shot down over Bena Bena in the NG High lands. 6 SPENSLEY is the second child of ‘L e ,ate G - w - (BfiO Spensley and Mrs. Spensley, who now lives in Hawthorn, Melbourne.

Mr. Spensley was a New Zealander who went to Rabaul, NG, in 1934 as manager for Colyer Watson. Later, when this firm became a limited company, he was appointed a director.

He was a corporal in the NGVR when the Japs invaded Rabaul in early 1942 and was one of a party of 14 who later escaped down the coast to Sum Sum They were finally betrayed by natives and captured by the Japs in early June 1942 and returned to Rabaul just in time to join the ill-fated Montevideo Maru.

Lieut. Cohn Stirling, of the 2/22 Battalion AIF. was the only survivor of this party

Perry-Windsor Wedding

Miss Jocelyn Perry, daughter of Mr C A ; p erry. of Wellington, was " J I I,y St - Paul ’ s Cathedral.

Mr ‘ Kenneth Windsor, Radio Officer-Purser of the NZGS Maui £°™ a !. e - . M^^ WW i ndsor is well known in New Zealand-Cook Islands service and in oOier parts of the Pacific as a former officer in New Golden Hind, Rawhiti, and Kanui.