FIRING FROM LAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 February 1940, Page 5

FIRING FROM LAND

ADMIRALTY FILLS IN DETAILS BRITISH PARTY FIRES IN RETALIATION. GERMANS KILLED AND WOUNDED By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. LONDON, February 18. A second communique issued by the Admiralty last night fills in details of the raid on the German prison ship Altmarek. It tells how the captain of the Norwegian gunboat, which had been escorting the Altmarek, agreed to accompany the search party of the destroyer H.M.S. Cossack to put to the proof the assurance he had given that the Altmarck was unarmed and had no British prisoners on board. It is revealed that “a tall young officer with a ready smile,” who led the boarding party on the Altmarek, leapt from the Cossack waving a revolver and shouting, “Come on, follow me.” The sailors clambered aboard, whereupon 30 of the crew of the Admiral Graf Spee, who had been guarding the prisoners, jumped overboard, scrambled high on the rocks, and began shooting blindly in the direction of the British boarding party, hitting one man in the shoulder. It was then that the British fired in retaliation, killing and wounding several men. NAZI FURY PROTEST NOT ENOUGH. ANGRY DEMANDS ON NORWAY. LONDON, February 18. The German Press and radio take up the cry “To protest is not enough” and threaten Britain with the worst possible disasters in reprisal. They declare that no State is neutral which tolerates such a monstrous crime, and that a quick decision is necessary now as delay is dangerous. Norway, they state, must repair the damage done. Field-Marshal Goering’s “Essener National Zeitung” says, "Even after such an incident a neutral can take effective steps to obtain satisfaction, but Norway is not neutral if she disposes of such a crime with a lame protest.”