DESCENT IN LIBYA

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 129, 2 June 1936, Page 9

DESCENT IN LIBYA

IMPERIAL AIRWAYS MEN BRUTAL TREATMENT ALLEGED ITALIANS' CO3JTIALXT CnlU'il l'rCK.s Association—By Electric Telegraph— Copyright. LONDON, June 1. The Foreign Office is investigating a report of brutal treatment of Captain Walter Rogers, a leading Imperial Airways pilot, and his crew of three.

The "Daily Herald" says that Cap-j tain Rogers, flying the 38-seater aeroplane Hanno to Cairo, there being no! passengers, for service in the Near East, landed at Mesylam, Libya. The crew was immediately placed under an armed guard and their documents j seized. The four men were quartered in an inadequate tent in blazing sun with an armed native guard outside. It is alleged that Captain Rogers and the crew were afterwards paraded as objects of derision at the point of the bayonet before Italian native troops. When the Hanno's papers were found to be perfectly in order, the Italians complained that the machine had been seen flying over a prohibited military area, which was actually the route Italy had chosen for British machines to follow. Captain Rogers was afterwards allowed to go to Cairo without explanation. The incident is the more astonishing as the Italian Government, army, and air force are normally very friendly with British aviators. A VETERAN PILOT WEARS ITALIAN DECORATION Intimate details of the wonderful flying record of Captain Rogers were given to "The Post" today by his brother, Mr. H. C. Rogers, a resident of Wellington who came to New Zealand about 14 years ago. Captain Rogers has been fly <* so long and sO successfully that he has frequently been given headlines in English newspapers, and his brother has a number of clippings from these. Captain Rogers has also been decorated by four countries other than Britain, and wears an Italian decoration. Captain Rogers joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1912 as chief mechanic for the late Colonel Cody, then chief of the Air Force. In 1914 he went to France with No. 2 Wing of the B.E.F. as a sergeant-pilot, and he had varied war-time experiences until he was demobilised in 1920. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1917 for blowing up a munitions train in the siding of the Krupp works at Essen, and for a time after that had a rest from active war work while he acted

as ferry pilot, taking new machines to France and bringing old and damaged ones back to England. Subsequently he was one of the pilots stationed at the Central Flying School. Loudon, waiting to bomb Berlin and other German cities. POST WAR EXPERIENCE. After he was demobilised Captain Rogers became the first civil pilot for Handley Page at Hendon, and he has the distinction of being the first pilot to fly a passenger machine from London to Paris. He then became an instructor in the Norwegian Air Service (military), and was the first man to fly from Christiania to Stockholm. He returned to Hendon and joined Imperial Airways when that company was formed, and has acted as one of their pilots ever since. He has done over a million miles of Channel flying, having been to and fro between England and the Continent on thousands of occasions, and his total flying hours are about 12,000. The ex-King Alfonso and King Amanullah of Afghanistan are among the thousands of passengers Captain Rogers has taken into the air, and he was decorated by King Amanullah after taking him for a flight over London. In addition to the D.F.C. won at Essen, he has the three Great War medals, the French Croix de Guerre, the Belgian Order of Leopold, and the Italian Order of Savoy. He is fortyone years' old, is married, and has three children, one being named Handley in honour of Mr. Handley Page, who acted as godfather.