BATTLEFIELD DESPERADOES.
PARIS, October 18
Recently a South African negro named Albers, previously serving in the British Labour Corps, was courtmartialled and shot at Lille. Investigations proved that he was head of a formidable gang of desei iers, who had been terrorising the old battlefields, plundering and murdering. The gang operated on the Somme, then near Passchendaele, wherein their victims included three women who were visiting the graves of the fallen.
A large force of military police were engaged and tracked the desperadoes to their lines, which consisted of well-provisioned dug-outs.
The gang murdered the household of a farmer at Fletres. Later they killed two other farmers and rifled their houses. Albers quarrelled with an accomplice named Stevens over the distribution of the booty, and killed Stevens. Three other accomplices were executed in Belgium, and a fourth sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude.
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Bibliographic details
Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXIV, Issue 17694, 21 October 1919, Page 8
Word Count
143BATTLEFIELD DESPERADOES. Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXIV, Issue 17694, 21 October 1919, Page 8
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