Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

"MARRIED FOR PENSION"
Shell-shocked Ex-digger Tells Story
of Deserting Wife .
DIVORCE FOR FRENCHMAN
"After she married me she lived with me for a week; then she went for me with a piece of iron. . . .and she left me, saying that it was only my pension she wanted," said the ex-soldier to the judge in divorce.
PATHETIC as was this story it roused not so much sympathy as the appearance of the speaker, Paul Grall, Frenchman, broken and shell-shocked while fighting in the land of his birth for the land of his adoption, with the A.I.F.
This week he applied to Mr. Justice Webb for a divorce from his wife, who instead of expending gentle care on the war-worn soldier she married, in the time when heroes were at  a premium, deserted him, and has stayed away these 10 years.
With simple patriotism Grail went out to fight for two countries, a healthy son of the soil, lumping his puck and tramping his weary miles with the best of them. In the mud of  Flanders he kept a cheery face, until in one bombardment he was blown almost to fragments. Covered with wounds, great and small, with nerves wrecked, he became a unit of  the broken human cargo which returning troop ships take home, when they come for another load of fighting men.
Not yet in the prime of life he had to start all over again and gather up the lost strings. Permanently injured and partly paralysed by the explosion, he had to find someone, a woman, to tend his needs, and what little he had he offered to a widow with two children.
This week, in simple style, he told the story for his counsel, Mr. D. J. R. Watson, instructed by McGhie and Chambers. In the witness-box he aroused the sympathy of all who heard.. .. White hair, a heavy white moustache, and bristling white eye-brows, contrasted strangely with his tanned countenance. It had been a handsome face, but worry and  pain had ploughed deep furrows over it. All in blue, with blue shirt, he looked what he was — a French peasant in a far-off land, and as he spoke, or when he was silent, he  twitched and turned as a man whose nerves know no control — for his was the most ter rible portion of war.
Brief Married Life.
He married in 1917, and Alice Grall, his wife, came with him for a week to Leichhardt-street, Valley. At the end of that time he returned to hospital, but even that short space of  time gave his new wife a chance to "go for him" with a bar of iron. "She only married me for my pension," he said, "and then she left me." Mr. Watson: What was your pension? — About £1 a week. And she gets that still? — Yes. Next Grall took one of the Soldier Settlement farms near Stanthorpe, but again Mrs. Grall left him, and never returned. That was  away back before 1920. Now he has a farm at Boondal, near Sandgate.
"On one occasion she attacked me with a knife, and injured as I was I had just time to strike it from her hand with a broom handle," he added, impromptu. Still, Grall could not  go on as he was, and he advertised for a house-keeper; a widow replied.
"I can't look after myself," said the witness, "and my housekeeper is a fine woman."
Mr. Watson: This lady had no children when she came to you? — No.
Has she any now? — Yes, two.
Who is the father of them? — I am, worse luck.
Despite this confession of misconduct Mr. Watson urged Mr. Justice Webb to grant a decree nisi, and brought much legal argument to bear out his case. In the end he was  successful, and the brave, broken soldier left the court freed from the woman whom he said "only married him for his pension." 

GRALL.—In everloving memory of my dear Husband and our Father, Father-in-law, and Grandfather, 2919, Pte. Paul Grall, late 47th Inf. Btn. (1st A.I.F.), who passed away 12th  March, 1947, at Greenslopes Military Hospital. Inserted by his loving Wife, Son, Daughters, Sons-in-law, Daughters-in-law, and Grandchildren.