HELPING THE ENEMY

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 March 1946, Page 7

HELPING THE ENEMY

CHARGE AGAINST BRITISH STOKER PORTSMOUTH COURT MARTIAL (Rec. noon) LONDON, March 20. A stoker, Henry Herbert Rose, aged 23, pleaded not guilty at. a Portsmouth court martial to three charges of traitorously giving intelligence to the Germans. The prosecution stated that the Germans captured Rose when a motor torpedo-boat in which he served was sunk off the Dutch coast in 1943. Rose gave information about motor torpedo-boats and radar apparatus, and showed the Germans snapshots of British naval ports. He marked anti-aircraft gun sites on a map of Portsmouth. He indicated the whereabouts of the British transChannel railway gun and provided an eight-page typewritten dossier on the naval harbour facilities at Portsmouth.

The prosecution alleged that Rose was later transferred to a war prisoners’ camp where he mixed with British prisoners from Italy with orders to collect information from them. He was repatriated in May, 1945. He was interrogated in August when he admitted working for the Germans, but said he did .so only because he thought he would be able to escape. Elsa Gertrude Brietzman, aged 34, an assistant cashier, was bound over for two years after pleading guilty at the Old Bailey to a charge of assisting and entering the service of the German broadcasting Service. It was stated by the defence that she was 'of dual nationality—British and German.