ESCAPE OF TWENTY-FIVE HUNS

Wairoa Bell, Volume XXXI, Issue 215, 11 January 1918, Page 1 (Supplement)

ESCAPE OF TWENTY-FIVE HUNS

SEQUEL TO MANY MONTHS’ TUNNELLING. HOW THE FUGITIVES OBTAINED PROVISIONS. LONDON, October 7. No fewer. than 22 German, offieeia escaped from Sutton Donington Prisoners of War Gamp, Kogworth, Nottingham, this week. They had as rn-uc x food as they could! carry, and maps on which the best way to the coast was marked. Twelve of the fugitives were subsequently recaptured, one of them proving to be Captain Muller, the famous commemder of the raiding cruiser Emden. Some school-children who were blaekberrying found ihim in Tollerton Woods, six miles from the camp at Kegworth, and informed the police, who arrested him after he had attempted to escape three times. Captain Muller had a compass, money, and food enough to last him 48 hours in a- big kit-bag, and was dressed in civilian clothes. Two of the recaptured men, who were found playing cards under a hedge, volunteered the information that they had been tunnelling for three months a distance of 50 yards, and came out in Donington Park at about one o’clock in the morning. They then broke up into .parties of four, ana made for the coast. Early in tlhe morning three more men, miserably tired out, soakingly wet, were captured by the police near. Nottidgli|ahi\. These men were traced by the fragments o; food they threw away. One of the fugitives, Kail Koch, 35, is described in the official notice as a dangerous man. He is sft 6in. tall, is bald, and wears pinceruez. He speaks English well and may he dressed! in a khaki twill uniform. Chiefly for him tlhe searchers go armed. Ctae other of the remaining fugitives was accosted by a civilian near Newark, and volunteered to go quietly to the police station. On the way, however, he bolted, and though the district Was promptly searched, he has not yet been run to earth. Ten are still at large, but it is believed at "‘the camp that they will soon be brought in. 'The officers, it appears, escaped by means of a 2 foot by 3 foot tunnel, 60 yards long, bored from the floor of the German orderlies’ brick hut. It was sunk 4 feet deep in a sandy, shingly subsoil, and passed under the barbed wire entanglements to the far side of a hedge in an adjoining turnip field. The officers’ absence was discovered at roll-call at 7.30 a.m., and search was at noce made for their means of escape. A farm labourer found the exit, of tlhe tunnel in the turnip field!, but no trace of the entrance could be found inside the camp, so the tunnel was followed from the far end. It led to a very cleverly concealed entrance in the hut. It ‘s evident that the soldier servants had made the tnnnel under orders from the officers. The officers must have crawled one after the other through the tunnel into the open field,i dragging rugs and despatch cases and provisions along with them. The crawl MUST HAVE BEEN A TIGHT SQUEEZE through such a narrow passage, though all the men are slightly built. Several engineer officers were among those who escaped, and it is suppoed that they planned the excavation, which is on a falling gradient. None of the prisoners had tools and it is believed that the excavation was done with! a. table! knife and that the dug-out earth was distributed by handfuls over the prisoners’ gardens. After the men escaped, the entrance must have been concealed b yaocomplices in the camp. Tilery is no mystery as to how the escaped men obtained the provisions they took out with them. About 500 officers are in this prison, and they are kept strictly to the Devonport rations and are not allowed to purchase any food. But the other day between 300 and 400 parcels of food arrived for the prisoners from * Germany and it was from this store that the men took out enough to last them a month. The moving spirit of the adventure is undoubtedly Lieutenant Otto Thelen, one of the recaptured prisoners, who has already earned fame by three other daring attempts to escape. With Lieut. Emil Lehmann, another of the recaptured prisoners, who has escaped twice previously, he broke out of Chelmsford Gaol. At Donington Hall, with Lieut. Keilhack, he dug a tunnel from an old library, under the barbed wire, and managed to get on board a ship bound for a neutral port, and was discovered hiding uner a. boat. Again accompanied by Lieut. Keilhack, he almost succeeded .in getting away from Holyport Camp, Maidenhead. While one sawed through the floor the other played a mouth-organ to drown the sound. Lieut. Franz Bruno Henraid, described as aged 19, complexion fresh, hair brown, and of slight build!, also succeeded in escaping from Holyport Camp, Maidenhead. Two German prisoners belonging to a party employed at IVncoed Castle, part of Lord Rhondda’s Monmouthshire estate, escaped’, but were recaptured by the stationmaster at Llanwern, who scouted the district on his bicycle. It is stated that German prisoners attempt to escape, not because they hiave any hope of getting away, but because they•wish to register an escape as a- means of re-establishing their military honour, which is tarnished by capture in tlie field.