WAR CRUELTY RECALLED

Hokitika Guardian, 26 March 1931, Page 3

WAR CRUELTY RECALLED

BRUTAL GERMAN OFFICER. LONDON, March 13. A refugee of eleven years from .Allied and German justice, a notorious German'submarine officer has revealed, only by Ids dentlr, his hiding place in South' America. .* Lieutenant Johann Boldk, of the-.submarine which torpedoed and sank the British hospital ship Llandovery Castle in 1918, and who himself sank the ship's boats with gunfire, has been killed in a motor smash in Columbia, whence, it has now been discovered, he fled after escape from prison in Germany. Of 258 persons on hoard the Llandovery Castle, only 24 survived the attack. All the twelve nurses were drowned. Boldk was tried for violation o' the customs of war by the German Supreme Court, when Germany refused to surrender him and others to the Allies. Captain Ratzig. commander of the submarine, did not appear for trial. Boldk, who was tried with Lieutenant Dittmar, refused to discuss the affair,, and maintained an arrogant demeanour throughout, the trial, for which he was greatly praised by his friends, the Nationalists.. •

The Court found that Ratzig sank tlie I-ilaiulovoi'y Oawtle. wbiob was showing all her lights, in ,waters in which Germany had guaranteed immunity, It found, further, that he had no reason to suspect that she carried munitions, and that he acted in defiance of his orders and of international law. and had deliberately fired on the boats in order to destroy evidence of the tragedy. One boat, however, escaped. Boldk. according to the judgment, was concerned in firing on the boats, thereby abetting manslaughter. He was sentenced to lour years, but lid and Dittmar disappeared from Hamburg prison after a few months.