A DARING ESCAPE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXII, Issue 8942, 7 October 1907, Page 4

A DARING ESCAPE.

A thrilling account of the attempt to kidnap Colonel Elliot, the British staff officer in charge of the gensdannerie reorganisation in the Drama district of Macedona, has j been received from Reuter’s Salonika correspondent Colonel Elliott, whliehnaking a tour of the district, stayed on the night of July 1 30th in Gyuredjik, a Bulgarian village about seven hours from Drama on the road to Nevrokop, and at 7 o’clock the next morning went for a stroll. Turning .into a side street he had only gone about 40 yards when he suddenly found himself seized by four men in kharki unifpms, armed with Manlicher rifles and bayonets, wearing bandoliers and carrying bomba in small sacks I attached to their belts. They tried to hurry their prisoner away towards the Mils, explaining that they intended to do him. no harm, but merely to make the Turkish Govern-

ment pay a ransom for him. The Colonel resisted with all his might, his jacket being torn to piec es m the struggle \ but when his captors tied a rope round his left arm he relaxed his efforts, fearing that he might be secured in such a way as to leave no hope of escape. He continued to make the pace, however, as slow as possible, and his captors, who were probably in too great a hurry, did not search him for arms, parties of the band were posted to fire down the street to intimidate possible pursuers, and these parties afterwards formed themselves into a long line of skirmishers to cover the withdrawal of the party who were hi charge of the prisoner. Two of the gensdarmes composing Colonel Elliott’s escort started pluckily m pursuit, and soldiers from an adjoining blockhouse began to fire across a ravine on the retiring Bulgarians. Meanwhile Colonel Elliott had been hurried some distance upward toward the forest and his party

reached an open meadow, where,, finding themselves under fire, one of the party lay down and began to return the fire of the two gensdarmes, who were only about I 0 yards oil while the other three tried to force their prisoner to lie down. At this moment Colonel Elliott succeeded in drawing his Browning pistol, and immediately shot through the body the three men who were struggling with him. As they ffell away he started running down the slope, dragging after him the cord that was knotted to his left arm. A few steps down he saw the fourth of Ins captors, whom he supposed to be Daieff, chief of the hand, taking aim at the Gendarmerie-Sergeant herb ad. Daieff swung round lus rifle to bear on Colonel Elliott, who instantly shot him. Still fuitbei down the Colonel saw a fifth Bulgarian lying on the ground with a rifle, and he shot him through the head. Not until afterwars did it occur to the Colonel that this man might already have been wounded. It was at this point | that the Colonel was wounded | in the thigh, and understood \ from the bullets splashing >n front of him that he was being fived at from behind. But in a few more steps he gained cover and was out of danger. Ho called off the two gensdarmes, who, however, continued to '■ fight in the hops, as they afterwards said, of capturing some of the wounded Bulgarians. Ho then proceeded to the house where ho had spent the nisht, and had his wound dressed. The two gensdarmes returned some time after, the o’der, Ferhad, a man sixty years of age, having been seriously wounded, and the younger, Mebmed, baying exhausted his ammunition, and baying had the mud sp'ashed in h's face by the explosion of a bomb, after which he thought it was time to bring his wounded companion out of danger. The same evening Colonel Elliott returned to Drama, and on bunday August 4, he arrived in Salonika, and was received in the Turkish Civil Hospital. His wound is progressing favourably. The conduct of the two gensdarmes was beyond all praise, and the sergeant in charge of the military detachment also behaved creditably in face of a well appointed band numbering probably bstween forty and fifty. The firing lasted about an hour.