DARING ESCAPE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 January 1918, Page 2

DARING ESCAPE.

NEW ZEALANDER GETS OUT OF GERMANY. Wellington, Jan. 4. Some further particulars of the escape of Lieutenant Roy Fitzgerald, of tiie Gloucestershire Regiment, from a (!er> man internment camp are contained in a letter writtey by Sergeant Gerald Fitzgerald, of the Twenty-eighth New Zealand -Reinforcements (infantry), from England to. hi*'wife in Wellington, lie was at Sling Camp when &:• was informed that he had four days' leave to- go to London to meet his escaped brother. He went and a Mmily gathering resulted, consisting of "Lieutenant Roy Fitzgerald, Captain Maurice Fitzgerald,. R.F.E,, Lieutenant J. Fitzgerald, now engaged . intank work, Lieutenant Eric Taylor, from Codford Camp, and Nurs'c Eileen Fitzgerald,. from Brockenlmrat Hospital. Lieutenant Roy Fitzgerald joined the Army 'at the beginning of" the war was awarded' the M.C. for gallantry fit the. battle of the Somme.- While woumlod and unconscious in the Messines engagenuv., lie was taken prisoner. While prisoners, hp and another officer went to get water from a place a few yards from their enclosure, pretending to bo two "Tommies," who were their orderlies in camp. Once outside they made a bolt for it whiles the sentry's back was turned, and evidently the German .was too flurried to fire until they bad got'too for. Still in their uniforms they travelled, but only by night, having to hide in the daytime, a distance of 1"20 miles, which they covered in .seven days. They were not challenged until they were crossing the frontier, when they were fired at 'by a Dutch sentry. Their only food consisted of what they took away from eamp, plus apples gathered on' the way. Their journey included swimming? the river Ems. Their treatment in Ger-' many, was not as severe as we luwc boon led to believe, "provided they could bottle up their feeling* at the overbearing'- manner of the German officers," Lieutenant Fitzgerald's experience in-twenty-seven days in "clink" for a previous attempt to escape.