PRISONERS’ SHOCK

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 228, 23 June 1944, Page 6

PRISONERS’ SHOCK

Goebbels’ Lie; British Reality UNSPOILT TOWNS (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received June 22, 7 p.ni.) LONDON, June 21.

“We must be somewhere else,” said one German prisoner of war who was marched ashore at a port on the south coast of England. According to a German news report . they had been given, the port was not supposed to exist.’ The “Daily Mail” says the prisoners saw the name of the town on a municipal dustcart, whereas it was one of the ports that Goebbels had declared to be a sea of flames and in ruins as a result of flying-bomb attacks. The prisoners blinked and stared round them in puzzled bewilderment. The same reaction could be discerned as each group came ashore—first, bewilderment, then disbelief. then reluctant conviction, which Was finally followed by a look of crestfallen seriousness. One pallid, scholarly, bespectacled German medical officer asked a reporter: “Do you think the flying bomb will have a decisive influence in the war?” The Germans received the answer as they drove to their prison and saw unspoilt towns and villages, well-stocked shops and normal-looking people, and also endless convoys of supplies en route to France. , , _ They reached the camp in a more sober frame’ of mind than when they last listened to Berlin radios