IMPOSTER GAOLED

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1933, Page 8

IMPOSTER GAOLED

GEIIAIAN WHO POSED AS HERO

RECEIVED CROSS OF HONOUR

LONDON, January 20

(After posing as a hero and a ■v-’ictihi of. Hie war, getting hi' name erased from a village war lUemorial’s list of tip, dead, receiving Fie. Cross of Tfonou r from the Government and being acclaimed by the folk of the village, a German impostor has been unmasked, says tin Berlin correspondent of “The Times.’ Bast year Hen- and Fran Daubmann. of Endingen (Baden), whose son was reported missing at Verdun in 1916. received a letter from Naples, purporting to ba from their con. the writer deGnriii'i. that lie had just escaped after sixteen years’ imprisonment in Algiers, and asking that his biri,, c«*rtiC ic"te be sent him.

The avriter actually was a tailor named .Hummel, who had a criminal record and who had entered Italy without a passport, his motive for writing to the T)nwbmann s being to otAo-n identification documents. He was embarrassed when, after the birth certificate and passport had been forwarded, he was met at the German frontier by the serge-ant of Daubmatin’s regiment, who escorted him to Endingen.

In a, motor bedecked with flowers he was welcomed bv 15,000 poop'e. and fc’io 'Mayor solemnly erased Dnubmann’s name from a memorial tablet. Da nbmn nil’s regimental c.omtna»der wa« convinced of th-> truth of Hummel’s story of sufferings at the hand 1 -' of the French, who, he said, had k r 'nt him in a cell, s.ewintrousers for the Foreign Legion.