ESCAPE FROM NAZIS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23811, 3 December 1942, Page 3

ESCAPE FROM NAZIS

Y M.C.A. CANTEEN DRIVER

IN LIBYA (Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, November 24. A lone New Zealander, Albert Duncan, who drives a mobile canteen for the Young Men’s Christian Association, was one of a handful of men who greeted the British troops when they marched into Benghazi last Friday. Hundreds of British and Dominions’ prisoners had been evacuated to the west a few days before.

When he left New Zealand nearly three years ago “Blue” Duncan was in an anti-tank regiment, but later transferred to the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Along the road to Mersa Matruh drove Duncan and a friend on the morning of November 7, convinced that Mersa Matruh was in our hands. A couple of miles from Mersa Matruh they were stopped by a German staff car, in which there were four German officers, and told pointedly that the war for them was over.

That night Duncan and his friend slept out in the desert with a guard of three Germans standing over them. Next day they were taken in a truck to an enemy base, where they arrived in time for one of the many Royal Air Force raids. The Germans kept Duncan with them as a kitchen hand, doing odd jobs about the place. “How long I was with them I do not know,” said Duncan, “but I awaited my chance to escape day by day. Sometimes I rode in a small car as the Germans retreated, and sometimes in the back of a truck, but there was another truck behind to watch my movements.” It was just before they reached Benghazi on November 10 that Duncan's long-awaited chance came, and just as they were going up an incline with no trucks behind he grabbed a water bottle, food, blankets, and a pair of binoculars and dropped off the back of the lorry. He rolled down a steep bank at the side of the road and lay in hiding in the scrub. He then sought refuge in a nearby cave. Day after day and night after night he walked, keeping to the bush by day and using the road only at night. One day he had the good luck to kill a quail, but could not cook it, so he ate it raw.

One night he watched Germans plant dynamite in a gorge, ready to blow it up before they retreated further west. “When I reached the settlement of El Razza on November 17 a kindly Roman Catholic priest called me in and said: ‘You look like an Englishman, in spite of your beard.’ He took me in and fed me and gave me warm clothes,” said Duncan. "He told me the Germans and Italians were miles away by now, and that I could wait there with him until the English troops arrived. They came the next day. I could hardly believe that I ■was back among my own people again.” _____________