PUZZLED THE NAZIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25856, 29 May 1945, Page 5

PUZZLED THE NAZIS

OFFICER NAMED CHURCHILL (Rec. 1 a.m.) LONDON, May 28. A mystery has been cleared by the arrival in London of Lieutenantcolonel Jack Churchill, D.S.O. and bar, M.C., concerning whom nothing had been heard after he was reported missing last June. The German radio last March reported that “ General Churchill ” had arrived on Vis Island with 1500 British and American commandos. No General Churchill appeared in the British Army records “ I am the ‘ General Churchill ’ the Germans were talking about,” said Colonel Churchill. “I was captured in an attack against Brae Island, a mile from the Dalmatian coast. The Germans were obviously puzzled when they got me. They would not believe I was only a colonel, and they insisted that I was really General Churchill and somebody of great importance—a relative of the Prime Minister. I just accepted what they had to say. _ It seemed the simplest. Their confusion was amusing, but it was not so funny when they put me in a concentration camp. I was not allowed to write or receive letters, parcels, or books.” Colonel Churchill twice escaped. He once reached the Baltic before being recaptured. He escaped a second time last April, and met the Americans near the Brenner Pass.