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Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 251, 23 October 1944, Page 2

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SERVICE DESERTERS

MASQUERADING BY AMERICANS

(0.C.) SYDNEY, Oct. 10. American service deserters have been found in various parts of Australia established in jobs, the U.S. Provost Marshal (Captain Chambers) revealed this week. "We have caught up with a number of them, but there are still some who are masquerading as Australians and have acquired an Australian accent," he added. "We caught one fellow who had married, bought a farm, and had been settled on it for twelve months. Nobody in the district knew he was an American." Recently special plain-clothes U.S. agents caught deserters building a house at Woy Woy, a popular seaside resort near Gosford. Another deserter was caught on a farm at Gloucester, on the North Coast. He had been A.W.L. for two years. Another was running a residential and charging his own countrymen exorbitant rents. Probably he would never have been caught had he not been reported for having made additional excessive charges for "extras." When provost officers called on him they thought he was an Australian "because his accent seemed so natural." But one special agent recognised him from pictures he had seen in Melbourne 18 months before.

Many racketeer deserters had large sums of money on them when they were picked up. One deserter was running a hamburger stall selling "genuh.e American hamburgers."