MYSTERIOUS FIGURE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 62, 6 April 1943, Page 5

MYSTERIOUS FIGURE

INCIDENT IN BELGIUM A not so well known incident in the. last Avar is related in a book by Mr J. M. N. -Jeffries, former correspondent to the Daily Mail, Aylien he describes the. fall,of the Belgian city of AntAverp. He Avrites:— "As the hours advanced there were signs of breaking and. disorder amid the troops. At some bifurcation of cross-point close to the front on the Lierre Road, Contich perhaps, or Avas it Lintli?—memory is not very precise about it—there Avas great confusion, jamming of A r ehicles to and from the front, rearing of horses, shouts, ambulances involved with ammunition AA'aggons, cars all honking and screaming at each other, with the prospect of enemy shells landing at any moment in the midst of, the disorder, and nO one to direct, no one to disentangjfe the jumble which greAV worse CA r ery minute. "No one, that is to say, till, a man jumped from a car and hoisting himself to A'antage upon some unseen pedestal or other, began to cry out at the mob in Anglo-French, and to point Avitli vigorous, imperatiAre gestures to this or that centre of the maelstrom. He Avas a remarkable and. in that, place inexplicable figure, clad in a flowing dark blue coalc, clasped at the neck Avitih silver lion-heads or something of that sort, after the fashion of the cloaks Avorn by the prelates of Rome and this dark cloak fell in great folds from his stretched, oratorical arm. But there Avas purpose in his gestures and power in his voice, and under his direction cars and carts Averc unlocked from each other, and. the traffic gradually sorted into streams. The car in Avhich I avas fell into its own channel and. Avent past, with the others, but as I iook-i ed back lie Avas still at his 1 post, poised like a statue, Avatching till the order lie had created Avast installed with durable momentum: It was Mr Winston Churchill.''