SINKING OF SUBMARINE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 292, 7 November 1928, Page 8

SINKING OF SUBMARINE.

CASE OF THE LOST L 55

PARIS CAB DRIVER’S STORY,

A man who claims to have sunk the British submarine L 55 near the fortress of Kronstadt, in the Gulf of Finland, in 1919, is now a taxi-cab driver in Paris. He recently presented himself at the office of a Paris evening paper and told a remarkable story. “I am,” the man said, giving only his initials, “Mons. N. N., at present a taxi-cab chauffeur here, but formerly commander of the Krasnaya Garka (Red Hill Fort), at Kronstadt. It was I who bombarded and sank the British submarine L 55 on May 29, 1919, in Ivaporsky Gulf. As the published account of that event is not wholly accurate it has occurred to me to give the exact details.

“The sinking of the L 55 occurred,” the man went on, “in exceptional circumstances. I was in command of the fortress, and I was preparing a coun-ter-revolutionary, or anti-Bolshevist, movement. It is, therefore, not without deep regret that I recall to-day the death of sailors who wero once our allies. But I had to obey the call of a higher conscience. “Every evening villages on the coast were boing bombarded, and I received not merely complaints, but orders. What could I do? If I had not.acted I should have been dismissed, and my object would havo been doomed to failure. I should have alienated the support on which I depended, of the population of the villages. “At first I obeyed superior orders to the extent that from my fort I fired a number of salvoes in the hope that the English war vessels would go away. But they came again. On May 29, I had to give orders to fire on a submarine, the nationality of which I did not then know. The shells of my big long-range guns sent up great pillars of spray—l can see them now—at the spot where the vessel was seen.

“When the firing ceased there was no sign of the submarine. I thought it had plunged, but the news now published shows that I sank it.”

“And your counter-revolutionary movement?” he was asked.

“I had eventually to take refuge in a neighbouring country with 6000 men. Later I went to Poland, where I enlisted. There is so much to tell. I think of it all. every, evening after I have garaged my taxi-cab.” And the man who sank L 55 took, up his gloves and hat and went off to pilot his taxi-cab about the boulevards of Paris.