“WELCOME BROTHER”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 160, 22 June 1935, Page 7

“WELCOME BROTHER”

Former Enemies as Friends GERMANS IN ENGLAND LONDON, June 20. “Welcome, brother,” shouted hundreds of British ex-servicemen, many of whom were former prisoners of war in Germany, when a train arrived at Brighton with 29 German ex-prisoners of war, the first German ex-soldiers officially to visit England since the war.

The Germane are members of the War Prisoners’ Association, and went to Brighton in response to an invitation from the British Legion to visit the cemetery where a number of their comrades are buried.

The Mayor and British Legion officials welcomed tbo Germans, after which members of the British Legion, many wounded and maimed, and some blind, accompanied by their wives and children and also by widows of British soldiers rushed to shake hands with the Germans. Within a few seconds each German was surrounded by a group of former enemies. Members of the British Legion with Mons Stars marched the streets alongside Germans wearing Iron Crosses, German standards bearing the swastika fluttered alongside British Legion banners as the procession marched to the Germans’ hotel amid cheers from a large crowd.

Herr Gievens, vice-president of the German War Prisoners’ Association, referring to tho Prince of Wales’s speech, said, “Every one of us is ready to grasp the outstretched British hand. The Prince is a man of moment both in England and Germany ”