GARDENER WHO FOOLED NAZI GUARDS

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5301, 14 January 1947, Page 3

GARDENER WHO FOOLED NAZI GUARDS

LONDON To the guards at Stalag Luft III, Peter Mace, '31-year-old peacetime poultry farmer, of .Romsey, Hants, Seemed the model prisoner. On his' little garden patch outside the priso'n hut il^e ,worke!,d several hours a day among his potatoes, carrots and pumpkins". When -he was not gardening he Worked as an orderly or learned the cello. The guards thougdit that this quiet-voiced AC3 was clearly not cut out for the intrigues and dangers oi secret duty. Yet for two yeax's Peter Mace, a Morse expert, helped to run the carrlp's "underground" radio _ and monitoried all the cod'ed radio messages from England. The reeeiver was a few feet from his bed, hidden in. a cavity in the double wall. Look-outs were posted to warn him if Germans caine too near. Then Peter would put the set haclc, in its hiding place and slip out to resume his gardening. The baffled Germans frequently brought in id'etector apparatus. But Peter, unruffled, would carry on with his hoeing" and weeding. The guards never found a clue nor caught a single member of the orga•nisation. Eventually Peter left for anoth-er camp, unsuspected and never questioned. It is now announced that the ihnocent AC2 — who was captured at Cifete and spent ^our years in prison camps — has jbeen awarded the BEM. When a Daily Herald reporter spoke to him on fhe telephone all he would say was: "The radio tearn' was already organised when I reached the camp. I had no part in the dangerous business of collecting components for the set. "Mine was a minor role in a clevcr British organisation, which must have had marvellous brains at the iop." And men like Peter Mace to run it.