A.I.F. ESCAPEES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21753, 30 June 1945, Page 5

A.I.F. ESCAPEES

RUSSIAN ATTITUDE “HATRED AND SUSPICION” GUNNER’S EXPERIENCES SYDNEY. June 29 “Hatred, suspicion, neglect and illtreatment by the Russians were the lot of Australians who escaped from the German prison camps into Russia,” said Gunner Vivian Cox, formerly of the A.I.F. Third Tank Regiment, in a Sydney Herald interview published to-day. Gunner Cox has returned to Australia by way of Odessa after spending four years as a prisoner of war He was two months in Russia after escaping from a prison camp in Poland. Throughout that period he was confined with others in filthy quarters under an armed guard. Hundreds of British. Americans and Australians were eight days In overcrowded cattle trucks travelling from Warsaw to Odessa. They were-given no food, and the armed guards said they would be shot if they left the trucks.

“In the two months I was held by the Russians I received no food but boiled barley and black bread,” said Gunner Cox. “The Russians refused to let any of us send messages home to say we were free. The cables we tried to send to the British Consul were torn up in front of us. Everywhere we met hatred and suspicion. “Although most of the equipment the Russians used and much of the food they ate came from the United States, Americans were treated no better.”

Gunner Cox added that the conditions at the front in the Polish village where he had been hiding were* “absolutely fantastic.” Russian soldiers behaved like animals. They were usually drunk with vodka. They confiscated homes and property at random. They raped Polish women in the open streets. Polish home rule was “just a joke.”

Nothing could be done without per mission from the Russians. A Russian corporal had more real powei than a Polish general. Poles accused of collaboration were shot by Rus sian soldiers on the mere word of an informer.