AT FOURTH ATTEMPT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 117, 19 May 1945, Page 6

AT FOURTH ATTEMPT

ESCAPE FROM NAZI GAOLERS

N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent KLAGENFURT, May 17. Refusing to give way at all to his German gaolers, Private Kenneth Poison, of Kaitaia,-after his capture in Crete, never ceased to make trouble for the enemy authorities. His first escape took him from Marburg to Cilli, in Yugoslavia. The next time he reached Innsbruck before he fell again into German hands. When at the Klagenfurt camp he got away and crossed the Alps to Udirie but couid go no further. His fourth attempt was successful, for he attempted no long trek through enemy territory, but spent five months in the mountains hidden by civilians. . , In between escapes Private Poison was one of those marked as troublemakers by the S.S. men. They tried to arraign him before a court-martial for the dissemination of propaganda. Of this he was guilty, for he passed on scraps of information obtained in a number of ways. Once, when S.S. men struck him Private Poison struck back. Immediately two other S.S. men leapt in with drawn bayonets. One blade laid open a palm and wrist in a gash which took 16 stitches to close. The long scar is the only sign to-day of his experiences of the past four years.