Back from the Axis

At Lisbon the sweating Portuguese censors begged for mercy. Aboard the Swedish liner Drottningholm, the third-class bar shook and trembled with the chattering of typewriters. In Manhattan last week the fountains of prose still poured out, orally and in print. Twenty-two word-congested correspondents who for five months of Axis internment had not been able to file a dispatch were finally satisfying their urge, telling of loot, mayhem and starvation in occupied countries, of Axis morale that has begun to sag in Germany, is almost finished in Italy but still does not warrant easy optimism in the U.S.

Some of their tales of their own five months in limbo:

Ersatz Reciprocity. Nazi treatment of interned correspondents was allegedly keyed to treatment of Axis correspondents and diplomats in the U.S. Arrested after midnight, most of them had a sinking premonition that they were due to spend the rest of the war in a Gestapo prison. An exception was I.N.S. Correspondent Hugo Speck. Alcoholically fortified, he sprawled on the floor at Alexanderplatz prison, went to sleep while 18 other correspondents waited tensely in a large detention room. Awaking to a guard's prodding, he heaved himself upright on the guard's arm, shouting "Hello, buddy."

Soon transferred along with U.S. diplomats to Bad Nauheim Spa, the correspondents renamed their hotel the "Grand Refrigerator." Its guests ate dumplings and sauerkraut three times a week and were bullied in minor ways by Gestapo men. To fight boredom the internees set up "Badheim University" (Motto: "Education of the ignorant by the ignorant''), offered a curriculum of drama (U.P.'s Fred Oechsner), Shakespeare & Phonetics (Chicago Tribune's Alex Small), Scientific Bridge (U.P.'s Pat Conger), with miscellaneous courses ranging from tap dancing to philosophy and languages.

Only one correspondent among them enjoyed special privileges. He was U.P.'s Vienna stringman Robert Best, a South Carolinian and World War I artilleryman who hated Jews and Roosevelt. After March 2 the others discovered why he was favored: he was released to become another Lord Haw-Haw on the Nazi short wave. He took the Nazi name of "Mr. Guess Who."

Sporting & Debating Society. After 48 hours in Rome's Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) prison, Italy's "safety valve" policy began to operate--the correspondents were treated well by way of establishing good will in case Italy lost.

Lodged in the best hotel in Siena, they had a large private lounge and two radios, which brought in BBC and sometimes New York. Association between correspondents and natives was frowned upon, but, as Correspondent Eleanor Packard explains: "Italians haven't much sense that way; they just come up and start gabbing."

The group called themselves the Suquet Sporting & Debating Society (after a deteriorated onetime brothel that preceded Siena), spent their time visiting museums, churches, antiquarian stores, local bars. Though forbidden to go beyond the city limits, Timesman Herbert Matthews and A.P.'s Dick Massock sometimes bicycled as far as 15 miles outside town. "In Italy," says Matthews, "no laws are obeyed, least of all by the Italians." Soberest of the lot, Correspondent Matthews read Gibbons Decline & Fall, worked on a book on Italian Fascism.

Several times Italian authorities complained that the correspondents were too gay, made too much noise, stayed up too late, bought too much liquor. When they left Siena the Excelsior Hotel management presented them with six bottles of champagne.

White-Haired Boy. Different were the experiences of Harold Denny, who looks aged after six months in Axis hands. In the New York Times last week he serialized his story (somewhat toned down to suit the conservatism of the Times). Captured with a British tank brigade which was nearly destroyed in Libya, he was photographed by Field Marshal Rommel, a candid camera bug who sometimes popped out of a tank turret to lecture his captives on their tactical errors. Contriving to get himself turned over to Italy rather than Germany, he was treated "almost with perfect courtesy." But when the Germans forced his surrender to them, he was taken to Berlin and put in solitary confinement. Grilled mercilessly about unflattering stories he had written, he was on the thin edge when the Gestapo men suddenly shook hands, told him he would be returned to Italy.

During solitary confinement, white-haired, rheumatic Correspondent Denny had been sustained by one thought: When he got to Manhattan again he would go to Billy the Oysterman's. "I would have clams--all the clams I wanted. Then I would have the finest steak the world ever saw. After that I would have the best strawberry shortcake in New York." But when he went to Billy's last week, Correspondent Denny could only gnaw a pig's knuckle and go home. Said he: "After I got where I could get decent food I ate too much and got fierce pains in my stomach. The doctors tell me my stomach shrank while I was in jail and I tried to stretch it too fast."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.