AWFUL AVALANCHE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23339, 6 May 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

AWFUL AVALANCHE

CEVENTY-FOUR men of the 11th k Alpine Brigade returned lately to a world from which they had been cut off for five days by an avalanche which killed four of them and penned the rest in a refuge hut, 7000 feet up in the Bernese Oberland, writes the Geneva correspondent of the Sunday Express, London;

From some of these men I have heard the strangest of survivors' stories. The queerest experience was that of Lieutenant Zimmermann, who was carried fifty yards by a gust of wind and powdery snow. "I instinctively loosened my skis," he told me, "and began to swim in the snow dust as if it were water. That is how 1 managed to keep my head above the snow. 1 must have swum 500 yards." N Fusilier Ulrieh Joss said .that the avalanche came down with the suddenness of lightning. "Men loaded with kit weighing 801b. were blown about like feathers," he

GESTAPO VICTIM VIENNA POLICE OFFICER MADE TO SWEEP ROADS SMUGGLED INTO ENGLAND A N ex-sergeant of the Vienna police, who pleaded guilty at Hove,<Sussex, to landing in England without permission, told through an interpreter how he was smuggled over after he had been arrested, by the Gestapo (Nazi Secret Police), and had served in a concentration camp.

The man, Leon Filip Drexlern, aged 41, was allowed bail on his own security of £'2oo and two others of £IOO each, and the. case was adjourned. Chief Constable Hillicr stated that on March 13 the Rev. K. Fausner, of Hove, • brought Drexlern to the police station and said that lie had been. smuggled into England. Drexlern explained. through an interpreter, that after Schuschnigg was put out of office he was deprived of his police rank-and became a road sweeper. Farewell to Wife At the station, as he was saying farewell to his wife, who was leaving for England, he was arrested by the secret police, the Gestapo, "for no reason at all." He was released after six weeks and then re-arrested. When released again he had to sign a paper that lie would leave Austria within two weeks. "1 walked to Antwerp," he said, "and went to a refugee committee, where 1 was given a meal. I told a man I wanted to get to England to see my wife, and then wo wanted to go to America. I paid the man all the money I had—one thousand francs." "After reaching England I was rowed ashore in a small boat." Mr. Max A. Adler, for Drexlern. stated that the only crime the man had committed was that lie happened to be what is known as non-Aryan. Arrangements were being made in America for Drexlern and his wife to go to relatives there, and he suggested an adjournment so that these arrangements could be completed.

Survivors Tell of Alpine Drama

At Iffigenalp, where they halted for food, the bodies were placed in fiagdraped coffins. The coffins were placed on sleighs and the procession moved on again to the La Lenk. Nobody spoke. There was no sound but the steady swish of the skis in the snow, which still fell gently. At La Lenk the whole village was waiting to greet the procession. A widow of one of the victims collapsed as sho caught sight of the coffins.

said. "Four were killed. Their bficks wero broken and the powdery snow entered their lungs." Quartcrmaster-fSergeant Veuz told me of a drama which took place on the other side of the valley, in the Wildstrobcl hut. . "We reached the hut with our clothes frozen as stiff as tin," he said. "For five days we were penned in by bad weather. Then we decided to make a dash for it, and set off in five parties of three men each.

"As the second party were passing a gullv on a steep slope there was a sharp * crack. I saw three bodies fly past. They fell for 600 ft. and then one managed to get a ,rope round a rock.

"We went to their help. It took three hours to free them. Two had their ribs broken, and one had tho muscles of his leg torn. They had to walk to Fierstli and thence they were carried to iffigenalp." Grim Procession It was an impressive sight when the long column of exhausted men was seen emerging from the mists of the mountainside. They carried three .dead comrades, wrapped in tarpaulin, on a sleigh made from a pair of skis and pieces of wood.