WAR PRISONERS FREED

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24536, 9 April 1945, Page 4

WAR PRISONERS FREED

8000 In Two Gamps

ALLIED TROOPS TO RESCUE '

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON. April 3. Four thousand British prisoners of war were released from Stalag IXC at Muhlhausen by the United States Ist Army yesterday, and another 4000 or 5000 from a camp nearHammelbtirg. which was overrun by the United States 7th Army. The United States 3rd Army liberated 320 British officers and 60 men at Legenfeld, south-west of Muhlhausep. The War Office reveals that Oflag XIAZ at Rotenburg, and Oflag IXAH at Spangenburg were evacuated to the east before the Allies reached them. The Exchange Telegraph Agency correspondent reports- that the 11th Armoured Division liberated 46 Jugoslav generals—the entire general staff of the Jugoslav Army of 1941—0n the fourth anniversary of their capture at Sarajevo, The generals, with 800 other Jugoslav officers, were sitting tired and disconsolate after marching eastward for five days from a orison camp at Osnabruck when three British reconnaissance tanks passed the house in which they had quarters. One general, risking shooting by his guards, leaped from a window and ran along a roadway waving, A corporal in the last tank saw him. pulled up, and disarmed the Germans. The generals said there were altogether 2600 Jugoslav officers at Osnabruck, of whom the - Allied air raids had killed IJB, ... Seven hundred British and American soldiers—t)ie first to be evacuated by air from Germany after being lioerated by their comrades from prison camps—are now in Army leave camps near a French Channel port, says a correspondent at Supreme Headquarters. There they , will remain until fit for the remainder of the iournev home They are hanpy but haggard. Months of privation have left marks on these men. 5 per cent, of whom arrived too sick and worn to undertake further travel. In Germany they had been subsisting on half a bowl of watei soup a day and one loaf of bread for six men. Some had lost nearly seven S *Tlw first Australian prisoners of w*r who were liberated from prison camps in western Germany have arrivedl at an A.I.F. repatriation camp at Eastbourne, The party was made up of 15 _ officers arid three other ranks. It included four former commanding officers of the famous 9th Division. The camp in which they were imprisoned was overrun on March 28 by the United States Ist Army’s armoured drive, which _broke out. of the'Remagen bridgehead and swept east and northward to complete the encirclement of the Ruhr., n The Hadamar camp, at which 18 Australians, 'all members of the Btn Division, had been since September. 1943, housed 323 British, South African. Australian, and New Zealand prisoners of war, including one major-general. 15 brigadiers, and three war correspondents, most of whom were transferred from Italy. French troops in the south hpve freed more than 4000 French prisoners of war and workers.