"EXCUSE PLEASE"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1944, Page 5

"EXCUSE PLEASE"

POLITE CAPTORS Airmen's Remarkable Two Days As Prisoners N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 11 a.m. LONDON, June 29. A Canadian airman, who for two days was the prisoner of the Germans in Normandy, told at Supreme Headquarters, what Reuters correspondent describes as one of the most fantastic stories of the war. The officer related how he and five fellow prisoners, who were taken after a heavy bomber crashed in a cornfield, received champagne when they asked for water and how German 'troops bowed and said. "Excuse please, British prisoners," when they passed in a slit trench, and how finally their 60 German captors asked to be taken prisoner. "The Germans tried to defend the chateau," the airman said, "but our advance parties and patrols bypassed it. On the third day somebody motioned us to the door of the chateau and there was the commandant fixing" a white flag to the wall. The last thing the commandant did before we lined them up and handed them over was to produce another bottle of champagne. An N.C.O. shook hands with us, with the tears rolling down _ his cheeks, and said: 'My sister is in London.' "All of the Germans were quite friendlv. Thev were shaken by the Allied' assauft. but seemed happy when captured."