PRISONER ON GRAF SPEE

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22922, 19 January 1940, Page 8

PRISONER ON GRAF SPEE

DESCRIPTION OF NAVAL BATTLE T— \ BATTERED BY BRITISH f GUNFIRE ■ \ NINETEEN DIRECT HITS (PHESS ASSOCIATION 7TELEGSA.iI.) AUCKLAND, January 18. ;; An account of how he was wounded and taken prisoner oj board ‘the Gei'man battleship Admiral Graf Spee, and the subsequent action resulting in the defeat of that -warship by the British cruij. ers Exeter, Ajax and Achilles, ij given in a letter from Mr A. B. Dixon, who left Auckland last October. The letter has been received by his mother, Mrs Margaret Dixon, , of Parnell.

Mr Dixon, who had been in New Zealand for the previous four years,. left Auckland with the intention of enlisting with his old schoolfellows in England. At Sydney he joined the T a i roa > anc * was working his way to England as a deck hand. In his letter he said the Tairoa was en route to join the convoy when at 4.45 a.m. on December 3 the order, was given for all hands on deck. A battleship had been sighted on the horizon, and the Tairoa signalled for identification. The ship bore down on them at full speed, and they saw it was German.

The Tairpa sent out an SOS; but immediately there came the boom of a gun, and a shell struck the wireless room. The crew had been ordered to the boats; but as Mr Dixon went to his station he was struck in the ankle by a piece of shrapnel. Ee reached the boat, but as it left the ship a launch from the Admiral Graf Spee came alongside and ordered it back to the Tairoa. Mr Dixon was taken aboard the Graf Spee with others of the Tairoa’s crew who had been wounded. He was well treated in the warship’s hospital, and at the end of a week was transferred to a j small messroom above the magazine, where there were 31 prisoners) from a number of ships, I When the crew, of the Admiral Oral J Spee were ordered to battle stations t on December 13, the prisoners learned - 1 that three ships had been sighted on the horizon. The German battleship made toward the ships, but' When theyi were revealed as British cruisers the Admiral Graf Spee turned and made at full spedd toward the River Plate. ’lt was a running battle for 16 hours, during which the British scored 19 bite, one right on top of where the prisoners were.

After the Admiral Graf Spee reached Montevideo, Mr Dixon was placed In a British hospital ashore, and he-was making a good recovery at the time of writing. His wound was practicallyhealed and the shrapnel in his ankle was giving no trouble. He expected shortly to leave for ' England with other former prisoners on a British liner. It appeared from Mr Dixon"* account of the battle that an undertaking had been given not to refer to certain aspects of the engagement./ Mr Dixon’s elder brother is serving with the Royal Air Force In Britain. Another brother enlisted with the Ist Echelon of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force.