NO SYMPATHY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 43, 25 January 1944, Page 6

NO SYMPATHY

WITH BULGARIAN PEOPLE

BETRAYAL IN GREECE

M any sympathy Tor the trouble* of the Bulgarians exists, there is one New Zealander who takes no share in it.. He is Gofporal W. H. Shaw, of Gisborne, who recently was repatriated from Germany. Captured at Corinth, at the tailend of the 1 Greek campaign, Corporal Shaw was then suffering from a wound in the. stomach. He was sent to a prison compound at Salonika, and after recovering from the effects of his; wound lie escaped and wandered for over a year in Greece, gradually working his way towards the Turkish border. On. the threshold of deliverance he was identified by a Bulgarian civilian as a foreigner in those parts, and through the, agency of this civilian he was taken by Bulgarian soldiers guarding the Turkish frontier for the Germans. From his experiences in Greece, Corporal Shaw regards the Bulgars as the most objectionable, in their treatment of prisoners and civilians. The tragedy of Greece is not so much the active measures of repression taken by the Nazis as the. terrible shortage of food. During his liberty there„ Corporal Shaw shared the hardships of the civilian population. He ate 1 grass and small domestic animals, and when these were not available he simply starved. From a normal aveight of more than 11 stone, he dropped to little more than five stone in his wanderings. Starving and almost hopeless as they were., however, he foundj tlie Greek people intensely loyal to the Allied cause, and determined that they would hang on somehow until the. British came back to drive out the Germans and Bulgars;. Pitiable as their own case wa% they would share their last scraps of. food with an escaping British soldier and try to help him on his Avay.