ESCAPE FROM THE AUSTRIANS.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 March 1918, Page 3

ESCAPE FROM THE AUSTRIANS.

; ITALIAN MOTOR DRIVERS’ ADj VENTURES. ITALIAN HEADQUARTERS Jan '. Courage and good luck have brought safely back to the Italian lines Ewo notor-lorry drivers who were captured by the jVustrluns near Udine during di(' retreat from the Isonzo. Like other nrisonors, they were set to work loi their captors, and being apparently ; quiet fellows who accepted their fata philosophically, they were employed to drive a postal lorry which carried the mails from the base up towards the Austrian front line. On these journeys they wore always under the eseort ol an Austrian soldier, hut they did their work satisfactory enough to gain a certain amount of confidence from their

j guards. I One day recently they were driving towards the Piave. They saw an Ital- * ian observation balloon beyond the rivJ or, and they began to talk over possibilities of escape. At length they fixed upon a plan. The next time they arrived at the village near the Have where they used to deliver the mails, the Italian driver announced that the engine of the lorryneeded some attention, and asked if he could take it to a motor transport depot a few hundred'yards from the village on the side away from the front. Permission was given, but as the distance was so short the Austrian soldier who acted as eseort did not go with them. No sooner were they out of sight than they turned round and came hack through the village at rail speed. | No one was expecting to see them so soon, and there was nothing to attract attention in one lorry more or less passing along the street. The result was that they got by unnoticed and headed at once for the Piave. They had several miles to go, and it occurred to them that suspicion would be less likely to he aroused if they had an Austrian soldier or two on hoard. Overtaking a couple of Aus-, trians, they accordingly asked them did they want a lift, explaining that they had been told to take the lorry to a village close to the front linqs. The men accepted readily and acted as unconscious escorts until the Austrians told them they wore near their destination. Having got rid of their passengers, the two Italians took the lorry into a deserted farmyard and smashed up the Engine with a hammer. Then, one armed with the hammer and the, other with a billhook, they began to creep across the fields towards the Piave.

In the wet grass they lay till nightfall, and after dark managed to pass the front line trenches and wire until they reached the river hank. There they found sentries posted at a distance of every fifty yards, biit each in a trench above which only his head was visible. It. seemed hopeless for the Itnl iahs to ‘g.et across without being seen, and they lay a long while in despair until .an Italian searchlight began to play on fho Austrian hank. Relying on this friendly glare to dazzle the eyes of the sentries, the two men crawled on hands and knees to the wafers edge and wading into the stream gained the Italian shore.

Danger was still all around them, however, and they had to approach the It&lian lines with. as much caution as they had 7 " used when leaving the Austrian;, ' / On being challenged they could not give the passward, and fate might yet have turned against them if one of the escaped prisoners had ;iiot had the idea of breaking into broad AElanese dialect. After long parley ’ they were admitted, with many precautions and taken under escort to the headquarters of the battalion.

Their account } of conditions in the Austrian line is a long one. Food sup. plies, they say arc scanty. The Italians prisoners, who are obliged to work for the Austrian Army, liave a ration of one small loaf a day between five with 3} ozs of maize flour and a cup of •sugarless doffee. Despite short commons, the spirit of the Austrian soldiers’is kept r up by the fanciful tales which are circulated among them as to the exhausted condition of Italy, which is spoken of almost with pity as a country in virtual dissolution under the control, both political, and military of England. The escaped men describe, too, the shameless pillage of Udine, of which they were eye-witnesses and they maintain that already tourists have been allowed to visit the captured town and go about in the Tyrolean costume-favoured hv Germans on holiday, inspecting its monuments, Baedeker in hand.