Lorelei & the Private

Private Noel Moncaster, of the Royal Pioneer Corps stationed at Luneburg, had already had a drink or two too many when he spotted a seductive fraulein on a street corner. She invited him to a party and Noel accepted. That was in May 1947. Last week, lighter by 35 Ibs. and a good deal sadder & wiser, Private Moncaster reported back to British regimental headquarters in Berlin, to explain his long absence; the "party" had lasted two years and seven months.

"We got on a train," Moncaster told his superior officers, "and I went to sleep. The next thing I knew, I was walking around a town seeing Russian soldiers on the street. At first the Russians didn't notice me, but on the third day they turned up at my girl friend's house and arrested me."

His captors in Magdeburg threw Private Moncaster into jail. When he tried to escape, they put him in solitary on bread & water. After six months, a Russian officer came and told Moncaster he had been sentenced to three years in prison for "espionage."

Last October, at his own pleading, Moncaster was released from prison, on condition that he assume a German name and go to work on a slave-labor project at Leuna, along with a group of German P.W.s. The Russians provided him with phony "German" identity papers, but never bothered to make him take off his British uniform. Last week Noel saw his chance. With the help of a sympathetic German fellow prisoner, he bought a ticket to Berlin, boarded a fast express at Leuna after the Russians had made their routine inspection and rode uninterrupted into Germany's British zone. His superiors accepted his tale and sent him to a hospital to fatten up. "I've been thinking about that girl," mused Private Moncaster bitterly last week. "Why didn't the Russians arrest her? I'm through with women."

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