Crowds Acclaim Nobile

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 421, 1 August 1928, Page 9

Crowds Acclaim Nobile

Italia’s Survivors Reach Italy

Enthusiastic Scenes on Border

(United P.A. — By Telegraph Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Associatioti) (United Service)

Received 2.0 pan. ■ ROME, Tuesday. GENERAL NOBILE and the survivors of the Italia '.vere enthusiastically -welcomed when their train crossed the frontier at Trento. Crowds sang Fascist songs and threw flowers as an indication of the public determination to compensate them for their sufferings and support their fight against their calumniators. The Prefect of Bolzano conveyed Italy’s greetings on behalf of Mussolini. The city of Verona’s welcome was even more enthusiastic, and included greetings on behalf of the Italian Navy.

A copyright message from Prague says the Caecho-Slovakian scientist, Professor Behoumek, one of the survivors of General Nobile’s party from the Arctic, made the following statement:—

“Irresponsible rumours are unjust to General Nobile and his expedition, and have necessitated Signor Mussolini, Prime Minister of Italy, ordering an inquiry. Immediately we fell from the airship Italia in the detached gondola. General Nobile’s first words as he lay on the ice, covered with blood and almost unconscious, were that he was glad I was not hurt. He took charge of the smallest details, although he was the most injured of all of us. “My Italia comrades were a band of brothers and heroes. Signor Ceccioni was the Robinson Crusoe of the red tent camp. Although he was so badly injured that he could scarcely move about, he never ceased to help us. He re-established the radio set, made us all felt slippers, fashioned kitchen utensils from the most desperate materials, and made a precious grill on which hear flesh was cooked. STORY OF CAMP LIFE “When the radio wire would not stick, Ceccioni prevented a fatal breakdown by using the tinfoil from a sardine tin and soldering the wire over the kitchen stove he had built. He even made a sleigh, on which he was transported to the Russian icebreaker Krassin. “Signor Trojani, the philosophical

engineer, became our chef. Whenever the wireless brought good news we became as gay as schoolboys, and General Nobile gave us each a malted milk lozenge. “Sergeant Biagi, the wireless operator, was a fresh-air fiend. He never slept in the tent, but placed his sleeping-bag under the wing of Captain Lundborg’s airplane, and slumbered happily. In the morning he discovered the footprints of polar bears al l around. Almost daily he made long explorations of the ice canals in a little dinghy. THE TREKKING SCHEME

“Two nights before the departure of Professor Malmgren and Commandants Zappi and Mariano on their trek across the ice floe, the professor expounded to the whole party his idea of marching to the North Cape. All except Zappi and Mariano opposed the scheme. Gener;U Nobile eventually yielded owing to Malmgren’s reputation as a polar expert. “On the eve of their departure. Malmgren seemed less confident. He said to me in German, which nobody else understood: ‘I feel that you will be rescued, and we will be lost.’ I offered to write to his mother if we were rescued first.” A message from Berlin says that General Nobile’s train left Nuremberg to the accompaniment of hoots and cat-calls, after a brief halt at the station. Members of the Italian colony among the large crowd shouted for fair play.