ESCAPEE FROM GERMANY

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 November 1939, Page 12

ESCAPEE FROM GERMANY

SYDNEY MAN’S EXPERIENCE ' A Sydney business man, who made a hectic escape from Germany after Great Britain’s declaration of War, has arrived in Melbourne (says a recent Melbourne ‘Argus’). He is Mr. Jay M. Stanley, and he includes among his exciting experiences of the last six weeks an eye-witness view of a U-boat attack on a British freighter and the submarine’s subsequent speedy destruction by two Royal Navy destroyers. Mr. Stanley was idly listening to a radio programme with German friends at an hotel in Innsbruck on September 3, when a sudden pause in the programme was followed by the fateful words: —“Diesen moment ist die

Neuichkeit gerade durchgekommen das uiilui 2J Angreisser England hat Krieg an uns erkleret! —At this moment the

news has just come through that our aggressor England has declared war on us!”

Electrified by the announcement, Mr. Stanley expected an outburst of cheering or a demonstration of hostility. But the news was greeted by gloomy apathy and apparent indifference. Aided by his German friends, who exposed themselves to serious danger to help him, Mr. Stanley immediately sped to the Brenner Pass, where he was stripped to the skin by Nazi searchers and questioned for eight and a-half hours before being allowed to cross into Italy. A Sydney train ticket found in the lining of his coat excited the keen suspicions of the methodical German frontier guards. After careful walking through London in “black-outs” for several nights and watching a futile German air raid on the naval yards at Chatham, Mr. Stanley encountered the last of his exciting experiences in the Irish Sea on the night of September 13. This was the torpedoing of the

freighter Brandon and the swift retaliation by destroyers which were convoying ..the.liner on which he was travelling. As a member of a volunteer crew on watch,-Mr. Stanley saw the freighter’Stand on her nose and slide beneath the waves seven minutes after she had’been struck,'the rescue of her survivors by the destroyers, and the depth charge which brought doom to the submarine. The Brandon was only six miles from the convoy when she was attacked.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful.