Fun on the Road

In the heart of northern Ontario's summer-resort country a jumble of big, rambling buildings sits on the crest of a rolling, wooded slope which rises from the shores of a blue lake. During World War I it was used as a recuperation camp for Canadian officers. After the war it was remodeled as a swank private sanatorium, which failed during the depression. Two months ago it underwent another metamorphosis. The Canadian Government surrounded it with barbed wire, set up sentry boxes, installed 300 Nazi prisoners of war.

Some of the Germans threatened that "Hitler will be in Canada by the autumn, so you had better treat us well." Canadians groused that the prisoners were treated much too well. According to international law, officers do not work. After 6:30 roll call, the men clean the camp, prepare their own and officers' food. During the day they swim, play games, get brown under the Canadian sun and fat on Canadian milk & butter. At night a Nazi colonel, the highest-ranking officer, leads them in a German song fest. Except for 75 Canadian guards, the Germans might be on vacation.

At roll call one morning last week no one answered to the name of Naval Lieut. Werner Koche. Army Home Guards found a tunnel three feet high, 100 yards long, reinforced with wood shores, which led from a secret panel in the cookhouse to a bank covered with long grass outside the camp. They also found a hidden radio room, equipped with a homemade receiver and still uncompleted transmitter. Wet cells for the radio had been made from fruit jars stolen from a train on which the prisoners had been taken to camp. Zinc and copper had been taken from unfinished plumbing. Other parts were improvised from an old house-telephone system. But radio tubes and a large dry cell were not homemade--someone had smuggled them in.

Canadian newspapers demanded to know whether men working on new camp buildings had helped the prisoners by furnishing tools, lumber for the tunnel and parts for the radio, how the prisoners had disposed of the 30 cubic yards of earth taken from the tunnel. Some people wondered why the whole troop of prisoners had not crawled out through the tunnel. And for three days Canadians wondered where Lieut. Koche was.

Lieut. Koche was quite safe in the prison camp. He had answered at roll call to the name of the man who had escaped, Naval Lieut. Guenther Lorentz. Able to speak English almost without an accent, Lorentz was on his way to Montreal. After escaping, he disposed of his camp uniform (brown shirt and blue shorts) and put on a sack suit he had taken with him to Canada. He found Canada was a more delightful place than he had dreamed. A gasoline station gave him a map. A friendly fellow taught him a trick unknown in Europe, how to thumb a ride. Obliging motorists gave him lifts to Toronto and on to Montreal. Kindly people gave him food, tobacco, even money, but there was one thing no one thought of giving him. When he tried to cross the Victoria Bridge at Montreal he was asked for it: a registration card.

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