YANKEE AVIATOR'S ESCAPE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 10, 11 January 1918, Page 2

YANKEE AVIATOR'S ESCAPE.

FROM HIS GERMAN CAPTORS,

JUMP FROM A MOVING TRAIN.

(From Our Special Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, December 17.

Cabled details have just come to hand regarding the sensational escape from Germany of Lieutenant Patrick O'Brien, of Momence, Illinois, south of Chicago, who has the prowl distinction of being the first American member of the British Flying Corps to manage to escape from Germany. He hae arrived in London.

According to information cabled to Chicago, O'Brien eluded his captors by jumping irom the window of a speeding train. He then became a fugitiye for soventy-two days, and, as his goal was within sight, narrowly escaped electro-" cution from the charged wires along the Holland frontier.

After cabling his aged mother, Mrs. Margaret O'Brien, at Momence, to expect to see him soon, Lieutenant O'Brien called upon tKo American Ambassador, Mr. Page, to seek advice regarding liia desire to be transferred to the American Flying Corps. In London he was dined by a group of admiring birdnien, who, like scores of friends along the front, had believed he had been killed when he was reported missing on August 17 last.

HAILED PROM CALIFORNIA. O'Brien, who is a sturdy young man of twenty-seven, was flying in the American Aviation Squadron at San Diego, Southern California, when he -went to Victoria, British Columbia, and obtained a commission in the Canadian army. Going to France, the next year he distinguished himself by his great daring over the German lines. On the morning of August 17 enemy gunners forced him to descend, but fortunately he landed behind his own lines.

Late on the afternoon of the next day he was up again over tne German lines, fighting the enemy. There were twenty German machines to six British in tho encounter, O'Brien's machine alone engaging four enemy craft" and accounting for one before O'Brien was shot through the upper lip. He fell with his damaged airplane from a height of eight thousand feet. When he regained consciousness ho was in a German hospital.

Later the lieutenant spent three weeks at a prison camp at Courtrai before he was started for the interior of Germany. There were three other prisoners under a strong guard in his compartment when O'Brien, as a ruse, had the window opened by complaining of the smoke.

JUMPS FROM EXPRESS. When the train was sixty miles inside Germany and travelling almost at express speed, O'Brien jumped from the train, skinning the whole side of his face, Teopening the wound in his lip and losing consciousness. Providentially, he fell on soft ground, but it was four o'clock in the morning, and the darkness shielded him. When he recovered he was lying in the field. * '

Then for seventy-two days he was a fugitive, travelling only at night. He trudged through fields and swam rivers and canals in Germany, Luxemburg, and Belgium before he reached the Dutch frontier. At the time of his flight ho had a piece Of sausage on which he subsisted several days, after which his Bole sustenance consisted of turnips nnd other vegetables found in fields.

O'Brien did not know the German language, but he used a little French on a kindly Belgian, who was so happy to meet an American in Britieh uniform that he sheltered him several days. Tho Belgian then gave him old clothes to cover his uniform and directed him to the nearest route to the frontier. O'Brien swam the river Mouse near Namur, and the next day was challenged by German sentries who decided ho was a peasant.

NARROW ESCAPE. But his narrowest escape was reserved for his last day as a fugitive when he oould sec Dutch territory. To circumvent the charged wires O'Brien built a bridge in a nearby wood and threw it across the wires. But it broke under his weight, and O'Brien received a shock which he said he could still feel after reaching England. When he recovered he dug with his bare hands a tunnel under the wires, and although it was slow progress, after several hours ho had a hole big enough to Crawl through. Ho then hurried to the nearest British Consul, who arranged for his transportation to London.

O'Brien took up aviation five years ago, when he was a locomotive engineer on the Santa Fe Railway at Richmond, California, and at San SYancisco. When he left Canada he wae in command of twenty men.