560-MILE WALK TO FREEDOM

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 288, 24 August 1918, Page 3

560-MILE WALK TO FREEDOM

AUSTRALIAN WAR PRISONER'S EXPLOIT. Private J. L. Newman, No._ 1074, of the 17th Battalion, a Newcastle miner, who enlisted iu Sydney, Ims arrived in London after extraordinary experiences. He escaped from a prison camp in East Prussia in company with two Russians. He covered SGO miies in a month, and arrived in Petrograd on June 13. There he posed as a Russian soldier. On the journey he saw evidence of the hopeless disorganisation of the Russians. He suffered severely from exposure and shortage of food. German troops were numerous. Once Newman was stopped and searched. He admitted that he had escaped, but he told such a pitiful story of a wife and children living in Russia that, tho Germans sympathetically released him. Owing to the chaos in Petrograd, Newman went to Archangel. No boat was going to England, so he worked his passage to Canada, lie remained a fortnight at Montreal and in a troopship. Newman is about 22 "years old. He went through Gallipoli, fought at Lone Pine, and wa.s taken prisoner i>t Langnicourt last April twelve months.