BY A 30-FOOT TUNNEL

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 281, 16 August 1918, Page 5

BY A 30-FOOT TUNNEL

1) —: I HOW THREE OFFICERS ESCAPED. Three German officer prisoners recently escaped from tho Water-lane Camp, j Stratford. They got away from (Ihe kit- ' chen to a garden outside tho camp by driving a tunnel from 4ft. Gin. to 7ft. below the level of tho ground, about 15in. in diameter and 30ft. long. Their ' names'wore: Johann Brane, Hugo Thiel- i man, and Edmund Klaiss. Klaiss wns ■ commander of a U-boat, They all spoko excellent English. An officer and his • servant, who escaped with tho party, were recaptured at llford. ; Tho camp comprises hv'o large houses surrounded by high walls and fences reinforced with barbed wire. Armed sentries wero mounted on platforms above i the enmp walls night and day. As the men passed under tho garden wall tho ! sentry could not seo them. Tho soil from the tunnel had been hidden under the 1 floor boards. Tho entrance in tho kitchen wall had boon covered with paper, '' ; towels hung asainst it, and a tnble with \ crockery placed neat' it. The exit in tho • garden was tho deepest point of the tun-, nel, and they came to the surface through ' the roots of a largo tTee. some of which had been cut away. Other roots were left to assist lliem to clamber out. They must have taken several nights to dig the tunnel, but no tools have been found.