HEROIC ANTWERP BLUFF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21197, 1 December 1930, Page 16

HEROIC ANTWERP BLUFF.

HOODWINKING THE GERMANS. ROYAL NAVAL DIVISION. ojE 148 officers'and men of the Royal Naval Division, who marched into Antwerp in October, 1914—a few weeks after the outbreak of the Great War —some with bayonets slung round their waists with string, others wearing oilskins or military overcoats over naval uniforms, revisited the city recently, on board the British destroyers Teazer and Tnndad, states a Sunday Express correspondent. Here in the wardrrdom of the Teazer the writer heard for- the first time the personal stories of the heroic bluff which held up the German Army for a week and relieved the. pressure on the thin British and French troops defending

Tyvo thousand strong, they marched round and round in a, circle and it is ma ■ *"he German general, with men under his command, believe that a great British force had arrived. They carried their ammunition in their overcoat pockets; they scraped shallow trenches with their bayonets and with their .nails; they starved and fought and died like veterans.

ve^er . a ns now, lived the great bluff over again. They retold a tale which was almost forgotten, but which must rank with the stories of the retreat from Mona and the landing on the Mole at Zeebrugge. “JDo you remember when we arrived at Antwerp the people gave us tins of sardines and bread, 1 ' said one. “I expect we looked pretty hungry, and on the way to the forts were met by some starving refugees with their children, and we gave them the sardines and bread.

No rations for a week,” said the third, except a tin of biscuits guarded by an . officer with a loaded revolver. And then the retreating ,47 miles, until we found ourselves over the Dutch frontier. There was a naval deserter who was. given his chance again. Do you remember how he carried that youngster the last few miles. The boy was only 16.” Round the wardroom table was Lieutenant Sydney Slowitt, who escaped from a Dutch internment camp, and Lieutenant Stanton Hope, author of "Richer Dust” a war story of the fighting at Gallipoli. Lieutenant Slowitt obtained a pair of pliers from England, concealed in a box of biscuits and cut the barbed wire under the noses of the Dutch guards, and in the glare of are lamps which were placed round the camp at intervals of 50 yards Then he pretended to be a New York newspaper correspondent whose passports were at the American Legation, and thus escaped to England. There was one among the party with a white beard. He was Pay-Commander Percy Nisbet, aged 75. He was nearly 60 when called up as a naval reservist in 1914. “ I was on leave when the division left for Antwerp," he said. “I returned the day after to find my office empty and the place deserted. I was furious, but I shan’t miss the Navy in the next war. I’ll see to that.

The ship steamed up the Scheldt and drew up at Antwerp Quay. A Belgian military band played God Save the King,” and down in the wardroom the veterans stood to attention and afterward drank out last toast to the Naval Division: “Here’s to us; there’s none like