GERMANS RECOVERED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16927, 13 August 1918, Page 4

GERMANS RECOVERED.

REMAINED ON SOMES ISLAND,

THREE DAYS UNDER HUT FLOOR. [BY TELEGRAPH.—OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

: WELLINGTON, Monday. Tire fonr Germans who disappeared from the internment camp on Somes Island on Friday morning. were discovered by the guard at 7.30 a.m. to-day. They were found shivering and half-starved, not in a carefully screened dug-out or out of the way cave, but in tho barbed-wire enclosure around the main sleeping barracks. It appears that some time in the early hours of Friday, after the round of inspection of tho quarters had been made by the officer in charge, the men contrived to lift some of the flooring boards underneath their bunks and to squeeze through. Just what preparation was made for the lifting of the boards or how they were replaced is not yet known definitely. The whole escapade is believed to have been engineered to cause a disturbance in the routuio of the camp management.; for, though the Germans certainly succeeded in eluding the guard for three days, they made no attempt to pass tho ring of sentries drawn around the building. Apparently, the men had had no food, or very little, since supper on Thursday, and their sufferings as they lay in the oold in their self-imposed prison must have been severe. " As a result of the escapade the 300-odd prisoners on the island have since Friday morning been kept far more closely confined than formerly. The restrictions in future are likely to be more stringent, and various favourite spots on the island, suoh as the series of dug-outs on the sunny face of tile island, where prisoners passed their leisure or study hours, have been placed out of bounds. The men who escaped from the island on a crazy raft recently had no great difficulty in eluding the sentries by reason of the fact that they were Quartered temporarily in tents away from ie main building. These tents have now been dismantled, and the men are housed together. It has not yet been decided whether an official inquiry into the circumstances of the German prisoners' escapado will bo necessary.