SON OF VON TIRPITZ.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 16, 26 February 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

SON OF VON TIRPITZ.

PLEASED WITH HIS CAPTORS

An interesting incident in a visit which Mr F. W. Wile, lately the Berlin correspondent of the "Mail," paid to th e detention barracks at Llansannan, .North Wales, for German officers who are prisoners ot war, was an interview with Oberlieutenant von Tirpitz, son of the Grand Admiral of the German Navv.

The lieutenant, who was among the saved in tro battle of Heligoland Bight, was watch officer in the light cruiser Mainz, and during tho engagement in which she was to meet her doom lie wa« "spotting" in the crow's nest with a brother officer.

Van Tirpitz, says Mr Wile, is a handsome young German of twenty-seven, with conspicuously clean-cut features, greyish-blue eyes, wavv blonde hair, tall, trim, and" erect. He speaks English with absolute fluency—thanks, as he explains, to the fact that both his mother and two sisters aro "Cheltenham College girls," and that lie himself one: sprnt three months in the home of a clergyman near Oxford. Lieutenant von Tirpitz. asked -whether lie was aware that Mr Winston Churchill had promptly telegraphed to Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz advising him of his son's safety, anid "Yes, my parents wrote me a'bout that in grateful terms. I know Mr and Mrs Churchill quite well. I played tenn's with Mrs Churchill at the Queen's Club last summer and lunched with them both." IX THE CROWS NEST. Then he went on to say: —"My part in tlie Heligoland fight wasn't very important. I fear. Of course, it was my baptism of fire. My chief recollection of the engagement in general is that we were very heavily outnumbered. I think I must have counted at least twentyfive British men-of-war from my place in the erow'n iu*>i of the Mainz before 1 was brought down. •• ft is only by a miracle that I was spared. The olficer on duty alongside 1110 in the crow's nest was torn .clean through the waistline by shell fire, while ] remained untouched. The poor fellow was too far gone to swim, as I did. after wo were swept from o'jr lofty perch and dashed into what seemcxl certain death in the sea. _ " I think I stayed in the ship as long as it was humanly possible. 1 certainly had no other thought than to go down with her. I assuredly did not expect to (omi' through the awful experience with my life. KNIGHTLY FOES. "But you see. T had not reckoned fully with the knight linens of our foe. f am for about twenty minutes m lull uniform, except for cap and sword, and with some half-burnt lifebelts to help me. when I was picked up bv one of the cutter-, of the cruiser Liverpool. "Cutters from that and other ships were now busily scouring the sea in all directions, making the utmost to save German seniors from urownmg- All of IK were twited exactly as if we were comrade.-, not enemies. I am quite sure Admiral Beatty's sailors made every poss'l;!* effort- to rescue our fellows. It was not the Britishers' lault that more of us were not saved. ••f hadn't been in England long he. fore .1 began to get convincing evidence that though these people are at war with us they remember that as tar as manv relationships in the two rsau s pro "concerned, they arc fighting old friends. , . T "V Kiel in the la.it week of June, we had a fine English squadron visiting „s. 1 was often in the Southampton and the Birmingham—the latter was to help sink us at Heligoland nine weeks later!—and 1 became well acquainted with Vice-Admiral Sir George \\ arrendcr and one of his flag-officers, Lieutenant Buxton. . . •Among the first letters I received m England, after my capture, were some from Vice-Admiral War rend or and Lieutenant Buxton, offering t<, won ft me monev, clothes, or anything else I needed." '