SINKING A SUBMARINE

Hokitika Guardian, 31 October 1928, Page 3

SINKING A SUBMARINE

CASE OF THE LOST L 55

PARIS CAB DRIVER’S STORY?,

A man who claims to have sunk the British submarine L 55 near the.fortress r.V kroiistadt, in the Gulf of Finland, in 1919, is iioxv a taxi cab driver'in Paris evening paper and told a remarkable story. “I am.’ .the man said, giving on'y his initials,,, “ Mons. Nt N,, at present !! a taxi cab chauffeur here, but formerly commander of the Krasnaya Garka (Red Hill Fort), at Kronstadt. It was I who bombarded and sank ?the British submarine Loo on "May , 2, -1919, in Kaporsky Gulf. As the published account of that event is not wholly accurate, it has occurred to me tq give the exact details.”

...“ Tlie sinking of the Loo occurred,” the man went oh, “ in exceptional circumstances. I was in command of the fortress, and I xvas preparing a coun-ter-revolutionary, or anti-Bolshevist, movement. It is, therefore, not without deep regi’et that I recall'to-day the death of sailors who were once our allies. But I had to obey the call of a higher conscience.

“ Every evening villages on the cons' were being bombarded, and I received not merely complaints, bxit orders. What could I do? If I had not acted 1. should have been dismissed, and my object would have been doomed to failure. I should have alienated to support on which I, depended, of the population of the villages. “ At, first. I obeyed superior, orders to the extent that from my fort J fired a number of salvoes in the hope that the English war vessels would go.away. Iknt they came again. On May 29, 1 had to give orders to fire bri a* sub-, iriarihe, tlie nationality of xHrich I did not then know. The shells of my lomg rangb guns sent up great pillars of spray—l can see then) now —at the spot where the vessel was seen. “ When tlie firing ceased there was no sign's of the submarine. I. thought it had plunged, hut the nexvs now published shows that I sank it.”

“And your counter-revolutionary movement?” he was asked.

' “I had eventually to take refuge ir a neighbouring country xvith 60(K) men. Later 1 xvent to Poland, where I enlisted. Tlx ere is so much to tell. 1 think of it ail every evening after I have garaged my taxi cab.” Arid' the man who sank Loo took up his gloves and hat and went off to pilot his tax icab* about the boulevards of Paris.