NO CONFIRMATION YET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1943, Page 3

NO CONFIRMATION YET

OF REPORTED ESCAPE OF BRIGADIERS FROM ITALIAN PRISON CAMP. MRS. MILES HOPEFUL.' (Special P.A. Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m|) LONDON, April 2. Although there is no official confirmation that Brigadiers Miles and Hargest have escaped from an Italian prison camp, Mrs. Georgette Miles has had hints in letters from her husband foreshadowing that something might occur. “I had a feeling that something was going to happen,” she told me. “As long ago as last May, on the second anniversary of our wedding, my husband wrote saying: ‘I will spent the next one with you.’ Just after Christmas I received letters in which he described a party at the camp. He told me that they sang ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ adding, ‘I shall be spending it with you next year.” Brigadiers Miles and Hargest were in the same camp and in another letter Brigadier Miles told his wife that Brigadier Hargest had won a raffle for four medals presented by the Papal Nuncio when he paid a visit. “After dinner,” wrote Brigadier Miles, “I did my parlour trick of supporting five men on my chest.” She added that Brigadier Miles suffered badly from food shortage shortly after he was captured and that Red Cross parcels had been invaluable and the Pope’s representative also had frequently visited the camp with comforts. In view of the fact that there is no confirmation of the report of the escapes, there may be a possibility that Brigadier George Clifton, of Aucklan, may be one of the escapees, for he also was a prisoner in Italy. It is understood that there is no international ruling that the brigadiers will not be allowed to proceed to England from Switzerland, in which case they may suddenly arrive in London one day.