SINKING A SUBMARINE

Evening Star, Issue 20019, 9 November 1928, Page 12

SINKING A SUBMARINE

PAMS CAS DRIVER'S STORY A man who claims to have sunk the British submarine L 55 near the Fortress of Kronstadt, in the Gulf of Finland, iu 1919, is now a taxicab driver in Paris. Ho recently presented himself at the office of a Paris evening paper and told a remarkable story. “ I am," the man said, giving only his initials, “ Mons. N.N., at present a taxicab chauffeur here, but formerly commander of the Krasnaya Garka (Red Hill Fort), at Kronstadt. “It was I who bombarded and sank the British 'submarine LSS on May 2, 1919, in Kaporsky Gulf. As the published account of that event is not wholly accurate, it has occurred to mo to give the exact details. “ The sinking of the L 55 occurred,” the man went on, “ in exceptional circumstances. I wae in command of the fortress, and I was preparing a counterrevolutionary, or anti-Bolshevist movement. It is, therefore, not without deep regret that I recall to-day the death of sailors who were once our allies. But I had to obey the call of a higher conscience.

“Every evening villages ou the coast were being bombarded, and I received not merely complaints, but orders. What could I do? If I had not acted I should have been dismissed, and my object would have been doomed to failure. I should have alienated the support on which 1 depended, of the population of the villages. “At first I obeyed superior orders to the extent that from my fort I fired a number of salvoes in the hope that tho English war vessels would go away. Bat they came again. On May 29 I had to give orders to fire on a submarine, the nationality of which I did not then know. The shells of my big long-range guns sent up great pillars of spray—l can see them now—at the spot where the vessel, was seen. “ When tho firing ceased there was no sign of tho submarine. I thought it had plunged, but the news now published shows that I sank it. “ And your counter-revolutionary movement?” he was asked. “I had eventually to take refuge m a neighbouring country' with 6,000 men. Later I went to Poland, where I enlisted. There is so much to tell. I think of it all every evening after I have garaged my taxicab. And the man who sank L 55 took up his Moves and hat and went off to pilot °his taxicab about the boulevards of Paris.