CYCLIST’S TRIP*

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21214, 10 September 1940, Page 7

CYCLIST’S TRIP*

ESCAPE FROM NAZIS THRILLING STORY TOLD MANY DISGUISES USED (Times Air Mail Service.) LONDON. July 31. Disguised sometimes as a French cyclist, sometimes as a French workman, once as the husband of a woman crossing-keeper, and at last without any disguise at all, Lance-Corporal John Lee Warner, escaped twice from Nazi prison camps in northern France and reached Lisbon today. He was a fugitive for six weeks. He is already on his way to rejoin his unit, the Queen’s Royal Regiment. Lance-Corporal Lee Warner, son of the late Colonel Lee Warner, of Camberley, Surrey, is fair-haired and slim. Whether he was so slim before his escape is unknown. His zest for adventure is unquenched. Weirdest Time He gave a Daily Express reporter the following account of his wanderings through hostile territories:— “ Perhaps the weirdest ten minutes was when cycling after I escaped. I saw again the advance emergency trench which my section had dug in such haste on May 20, over a month before, to stop the surprise drive of the German tanks. “ Now all was deathly still. I tried to find the graves of my dead comrades. Nearly two thousand were killed near here, but I could not find the graves. “ Being a prisoner meant being marched from one centre to another with almost no food. The French were given preference over us for what food there was. Sometimes we would stand six hours in a queue and then get nothing. “ On one day—that was a day to remember—a group of us got twenty suckling pigs. We roasted some on wooden spits and boiled the rest in pans on the floor of a huge granary. “ At last I found a man who had civilian clothes and was willing to change. Caught Again “ The change-over was made and I got away. I found shelter for eight days in a railwayman’s cottage at a level crossing. Then a blue-uni-formed German walked in one day and asked me where was the wife, as the trains were going to start running in a few hours, and she had better get back on the job of watching the crossing. “ In the best French I could muster I said my wife had gone to try to find food and would be back soon. Luckily the German knew even less French than I did, and he went off. “ I thought it was time for me to go also. “ So, buying a bicycle for ISOO francs, I cycled up the coast, passing the British cemeteries. They are still well cared for by British ex-service-men who are at their post tending them. Many Germans visit the German graves in these cemeteries. “ I had ideas of crossing the Channel but I got arrested. A few days later I escaped again, cycled south and crossed the rivers. “ Continuing my journey south I passed through Paris and managed to avoid the last German controls. “In Marseilles I found hundreds of British people from all parts of France and even from Belgium, Switzerland and Italy stranded there. Queues at 5 a.m. “ Life is easier in Marseilles than in other places, but it’s grim enough. The French soldiers who are demobilised have been ordered not to wear their uniforms. But many have not the money to buy civilian clothes. “ Three days a week there is no pastry, another three days no wine. Meat queues begin at five o’clock in the morning. “ The Canebiere, which used to be one of the most animated streets of Europe, is now almost deserted. “ It took me two days to reach the Spanish frontier by train. I was turned back at the border because I hadn’t a French exit permit. " So I wandered up the hills and was arrested by gendarmerie. They reprimanded me. But then they put me on the right path across the frontier and—well, now it’s back to the regiment.”