BRITISH SOLDIER TAKES WOMAN HE LOVES FROM ITALY

Wanganui Chronicle, 6 January 1947, Page 6

BRITISH SOLDIER TAKES WOMAN HE LOVES FROM ITALY

CROSSED ALPS AFOOT, TO PARIS; SHIP TO ENGLAND

Recd. 6.30 p m. London, Jan. 4. A 25-year-old soldier, Walter Edwards, of Norwich, brought the woman he loved from Italy to England the hard way. Edwards, in a statement read at lhe Norwich Police Court, where the woman. Ude Nuccia Tenca, aged 34, was charged with illegally entering Britain, and Edwards with aiding her, said they walked from Italy through waist-deep snow across the Alps and then through France to Faris, using railway tunnels to avoid gendarmes. A French fisherman brought them in his boat to within three miles of the English coast. He charged £6O and £6 additional for the use *of a rowing boat in which they landed in England. They then hiked to Norwich, where the police found them in a hut. on New Year’s Eve.

Edwards said that while serving in Italy he received news that his wife was misbehaving herself. There were other family worries, and he deserted at the end of April, 1946. The money Tenca received from the sale of her shop in Milan took them by train to the Alps. They crossed the Little St. Bernard Pass on foot, with the aid of an Italian guide, and walked most of the way to Paris. The Bench decided to let Tenca stay in England pending the decision of the immigration authorities. Edwards was bound over to await military escort. It was stated in court, that the Army is handling Edwards’s divorce proceedings.