HIGH TREASON CHARGE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 148, 20 December 1945, Page 8

HIGH TREASON CHARGE

NAVAL ENGINEER ON TRIAL

I LONDON, December 18. 1 "This is the case of a man who described himself—perhaps you may not think inaccurately—as a rat," said the Attorney-General. Sir Hartley SKawcross, when Walter Purdy, a junior engineer of the Royal Navy, was charged at the Old Bailey with high treason. Purdy was captured when H.M.S. Van Dyck was sunk off Norway in July, 1940. Besides allegedly helping the enemy by giving radio talks. Purdy is charged with giving information while a prisoner about the existence of a secret tunnel and a wireless receiving set, and also with serving with the SS Corps and preparing pamphlets, etc., as propaganda. Sir Hartley Shawcross said the evidence showed, even on Purdy's own account, that he sold himself to the enemy. He was not unwilling to betray both his fellow-prisoners and his country for more favourable treatment for himself than was usually accorded war prisoners. By arrangement with Wiliam Joyce, he made 10 broadcasts in return for a promise to be allowed to escape. After a period of freedom in Berlin. Purdy arrived at a prisoner of war camp, where he learned of a secret tunnel and a secret wireless set and of the activities in Berlin of a prisoner named Brown which were of great help to the Allies. Brown's activities were stopped within a few days and the wireless set discovered. Sir Hartley Shawcross said Purdy had been a member of the British Union of Fascists before the war. The hearing was adjourned. PLOT AGAINST JOYCE Rec. 12,50 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 19. When the case against Walter Purdy for high treason was resumed at the Old Bailey today, Mr. J. P. Edey, K.C., for the defence, said that Purdy, while in Germany, plotted against the life of William Joyce, whom he loathed. The Germans subjected Purdy to ill treatment, the marks of which he still bore. Purdy said in evidence that he joined the Ilford branch of the British Union of Fascists in 1934. when he was 16. and he remained a member for only one month. He tried to escape from camps to which he was sent in Germany so that he could have another crack at the enemy. Purdy said that he sent letters to a woman in London, intending that they should reach Scotland Yard. The letters included a weather code in the form of a poem, which was meant for the R.A.F. He also claimed to have helped Allied airmen by making oscillations on a radio set in a flat in Berlin where he lived for a time. Purdy referred to two attempts which he declared he made to kill Joyce. On one occasion a suitcase packed with hand-grenades was left under a seat in a railway carriage in which Joyce was travelling, but the mechanism failed. Purdy denied that he gave the Germans information about a tunnel or secret radio at the war prisoners' camp. He declared that the Germans kept him in solitary confinement and tortured him after a preliminary courtmartial, at which he was charged on 11 counts of sabotage, communicating with the enemy by means of radio, and attempted murder. He was sentenced to death at the final courtmartial.