DAYS OF TERROR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26616, 12 November 1947, Page 5

DAYS OF TERROR

BARAMULA CONVENT CAPTIVES Rec. 10 p.m. LONDON. Nov. 11. The 10-day diary of his experiences as a captive in the hospital at Baramulaf is related in a message from the Daily Express correspondent. He says Mahsoud tribesmen came in. crazed with fighting, shooting and screaming as they charged down from the hillsides after the broken Kashmir forces. Within 30 minutes they looted the convent and six were shot dead, including Mr and Mrs Dykes and the assistant Mother Superior, Teresalina. who is Spanish, and who had given her life for the Mother Superior. While the sound of looting in the college and convent could be heard, two fathers gave the final absolution to Mother Teresalina. and received into the church the Hindu fam’ly of Pasbricha. Father Shanks’s flock of 23 children and 44 adults included the three Dykes children. Wandering tribesmen for the first six r.iehts broke into the ward where the refugees waited and sent screaming women and children huddling into the corner. Sometimes tribesjnen searched for Hindu or Sikh women. Father Shanks had cut their hair and dressed them in European clothes. Early one morning Father Shanks defied a gang of husky thugs who demanded women. Father Shanks praved thanksgiving when a movement order sent the gang off. The ’correspondent concludes that on the last day of the ordeal, just as the fathering repeated the final prayer of the daily service the door burst onen and in marched the Pakistan officer who brought the rescue convoy.