HIS FIVE ESCAPES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 121, 25 May 1942, Page 3

HIS FIVE ESCAPES

SUCCESS IN THE LAST

A FIGHTING DUTCHMAN

LONDON. ' Five times he escaped from German prison camps. The fifth time he escaped from Germany. And to-day I can tell you his story, says an Express reporter. He is a Dutchman —Etienne Henri Larive. He was a lieutenant in the* Royal Netherlands Navy—and now, after 20 months, he is going xo sea again. He is 26, slim and dark, modest, humorous and brave. In peace days, when he was visiting Weymouth, he saved a child from the sea. In war days, in the battle outside Rotterdam, he tried to save his destroyer as she was attacked by Stuka dive-bombers. The ship sank—but for four days he and other officers fought alongside Dutch marines. Near Ha mm— Then came the "Cease fire" order. And a "correct" German officer advised him to sign a declaration that he would stop fighting. He refused—and was taken to a prison camp near Hamm. "We had great fun when the R.A.F. bombed Hamm," he recalls. "Jerry sentries had to rush round putting out the spotlights trained on the barbed wire. We used to cheer. I No. 1 was made from this camp. "My plan," he explained, "was based on a shed outside the barbed wire used for parcel distributions. "I joined the usual queue. While my comrades crowded round I changed from my officer's jacket into a blue sweater and an oilskin. "I had a basket full of straw. Instead of going back through the barbed wire I held the basket on my shoulder, covering my face, and then walked forward through four other rooms—and out to the edge of the camp." That morning at a bank in the town of Soest a workman, littered with pieces of straw, called to change some Dutch money. The counter clerk paid out about 30/. And that night the lieutenant, without a ticket, boarded a train going to Munich. He dodged the ticket inspectors, but at Ulm, where he left the train, he was hauled before the stationmaster. He had left his ticket in the train, he explained in German, and the station-master retorted: "Get out! Mind you pay for your ticket when you leave here." He did leave Ulm—walking. But in the wrong direction. After getting on the right way again he was challenged by an armed forest keeper. He hid under a train until it moved. Then he clung to the steps at the end of a coach. He was seek by a frontier guard, and there a chase through the train. Guard and railway officials pulled out guns. And he was caught. As a "Civvy" Escapes 2. 3 and 4 were from a camp for 400 Belgians and Dutch near Breslau. Larive was there for eight months—months of plotting with other Dutchmen. First he got outside the camp with a Belgian exercise party by wearing a Belgian soldiers' uniform. But he bad to scurry inside the camp because « Belgian prisoner lost his nerve. Then he helped in the escape of two Dutch colonial soldiers. They got away, and the next day he put on a "civvy" suit belonging to one of the prisoners, and a pair of spectacles, tr»d walked out of the %camp.

But he was stopped. Later he planned to get through a wall into a nunnery adjoining the barracks, but was discovered as he escaped. 450 of Them Escape No. 5 was from Colditz camp at an old castle between Leipzig and Dresden, where 450 prisoners who had tried escaping before had 380 guards. He got away— But this story I cannot tell now, because other men may use the same track—other Dutchmen who want to stand with the young lieutenant who refused to stop fighting and is now going fighting again.