PUTTING BOMBS IN SHIPS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 January 1933, Page 8

PUTTING BOMBS IN SHIPS

RINTELEN TELLS HIS STORY On the top lloor of a Loudon apartment house near Paddington railway station a tall, leanly-built German with close-cropped grey hair sits writ ing for hours on end. He is Captain F. Von Rintelen, whose chief occu pation during the war was putting incendiary bombs in ships leaving New York with supplies for the Allies. He has gone to London to write a book about it.

A sinister reputation was built round Captain Von Rintelen’s activities during the war. He was described as a cunning fiend who had baffled the keenest brains of the British Secret Service. He is an exceedingly jolly person—talkative, but not boastful. “1 was just a little mischiefmaker,” he said with a chuckle to a ‘Sunday Express’ representative recently. “My job was to delay the transport of supplies for Russia, and I did it with my little fire bombs. 1 was caught ami sent, to an American prison for four years. My work irritated the British Secret Service, but it was a comparatively small matter.”

Then Captain Rintelen related how, posing us “E. Gibbons,” a. British importer, he bad placed his bombs in the holds of thirty-two vessels. “My activities never caused a death,” he said. “Three or four of the bouts were sunk, but no lives were lost.”

The interviewer interrupted: “But I thought you were the muster bruin behind all German espionage in the United States. IL is said that you look orders from the Kaiser himself." “Master fiddlesticks!” retorted Captain Rintelen. “1 never spoke to the Kaiser in my life. 1 just curried on with my work. My success was mainly due to bluff. How I bluffed everybody in Now York! Ha! ha! ha! “My work was stopped after five months, but I did my bit rather well.”