TUNNEL DUG

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 March 1943, Page 4

TUNNEL DUG

OUT OF LONDONDERRY PRISON ESCAPE OF 21 REPUBLICAN INTERNEES. ' ELEVEN RECAPTURED IN EIRE. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, March 21. Twenty-one Republican internees escaped from a Londonderry prison into the yard of an adjoining house and fled in a furniture van which was waiting in a nearby street. The escapees constructed a tunnel through 40 yards of clay fj’om their prison cells, and emerged to freedom through half a ton of coal in a shed situated in the backyard of a house. The men, dripping with clay and mud, walked into the kitchen where the daughter of the occupier was preparing breakfast. The daughter told them to get out of the house. She said they filed out rather quietly through the front door. A furniture van, in which were several men with tommy-guns, was drawn up in the street. To a passerby’s remark, “You are early this morning,” one of them replied, “Yes, we have a bit of shifting to do.” The escapees entered the van and were driven off toward the border. At Saint Johnston’s customs port the driver threatened officials with a ma-chine-gun as the van entered Eire. Five hours later Eire police and military captured 11 of the escapees, who were surrounded on a hill near Saint Johnston. Hundreds of armed police and troops with high-powered cars are combing districts in Eire and Northern Ireland for the remainder of the escapees. Those captured stated that six or seven of the escapees were leaders of the Republican movement who planned the escape. Others joined in at the last moment. The excavation of the tunnel occupied six weeks, in which five tons of clay were dug out, carried out in pockets and scattered on the prison 'grounds.