“‘Escape Easy,’ Says Nazi; ‘Guard Inside Was Asleep’,” Toronto Star. October 26, 1940. Page 08.
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Put Pillow in Hospital Bed, Walked Calmly Out, Stole Boat
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FOG FOILS GETAWAY
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After tiptoeing past a sleeping guard in Christie Street hospital, Carl Rabe, U-boat officer, walked boldly through the city in his conspicuous naval uniform to the Humber River and stole a rowboat, he related last night.
He was recaptured in Long Branch shortly before midnight by George Spear, an unarmed industrial plant guard who mistook the 30-year-old German for a new Long Branch police constable and approached to make his acquaintance. Rabe had abandoned the boat off 23rd St. and was walking towards No. 2 highway to get his bearings. James Kerry drove Spear and his prisoner to the police station.
In slow, but good English, the haggard, unkempt prisoner of war said he had planned to cross the lake to the U.S. in the rowboat but fog blotted out the stars by which he planned to plot his course. He had been rowing towards the U.S. coast all day, he said.
Despite his hunger and thirst, having had nothing to eat nor drink for 24 hours, Rabe was able to grin widely when asked by a reporter for The Star how he escaped.
‘It was easy,’ he said, ‘the guard inside was asleep. The one outside was marching up and down. I waited until he turned and I tiptoed down the hall. I walked down your main street and along the waterfront.
Followed Guard Out
He said he ‘fooled’ his guards by placing his pillow under the bed clothes to make it appear as if he was lying there fast asleep. The ruse was evidently successful, for Rabe claims he walked out shortly after midnight, and his escape was not noticed until close to 7 a.m.
‘When the outside guard came in,’ he said. ‘I hid behind the door. He looked at my bed and thought I was asleep and went out again. I followed him out and by the time the guard who had been asleep awoke to take up his duty. I was far away,’ Rabe said, smiling.
‘Why did you break out?’ ‘Because it was my duty to the fatherland,’ he said, in a low voice.
Spear, who lives on Walnut Cres., Long Branch, said he went out to get a breath of air before going to bed. He saw a uniformed man and started after him, thinking it was P.C. Robert Arthur.
‘I soon realized it wasn’t,’ Spear said. ‘I got one look at the star on his sleeve and I knew this was the guy who had escaped from Christie St. I said to him, ‘You’re the escaped prisoner,’ and he said, to my amazement, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘He seemed like a nice fellow,’ Spear said. ‘He was terribly tired and weak and hungry. He hadn’t eaten since the night before. He almost seemed glad to be caught and to have someone with whom he could talk.
‘I grabbed his arm,’ Spear said, ‘and told him he would have to come to the police station. He made no objection and did everything he was told without hesitation.’
Feared a Hold-Up
Spear attempted to flag a passing car but the driver ignored him. The next driver, James Kerr, Arcadian Circle, stopped and cautiously lowered the window, thinking, he said, ‘It might be a hold-up.’
‘I almost fell out of the car when Spear told me he had the German,’ Kerr, a Bell Telephone employee, stated. ‘I jumped out and opened the front door while Spear held him. Then we drove to the station.’
On the way to the station Spear saw P.C. Robert Arthur, for whom he had earlier mistake the German. He honked his horn, attracted Arthur’s attention. He climbed in and began conversing with Rabe.
‘He told me,’ Arthur said, ‘that he was in the Russian mercantile service before the war and learned to plot a course from the stars.’
‘He knew most of the landmarks around here,’ Arthur said, ‘and he knew it was about 35 miles to the United States. The distance didn’t bother him,’ Arthur added. ‘He said he would have made it if it hadn’t been for the fog.
‘He said he was a surgeon in civil life,’ Arthur continued. ‘He told us he had been promised promotion on completion of his first submarine trip.
‘He was quite off-hand about the sinking of his sub,’ Arthur said. ‘He told me how the U-boat was on her way to Narvik when the British were laying siege to the port. They were half-way there when a British destroyer spotted them and dropped depth charges.’ Arthur and the German related.
‘I was picked up by the Britishers. Not many of the men on our submarine escaped,’ Rabe told Chief Robert Smyth.
In the rowboat was a life-preserver. Rabe said he took it off a pier where he stole the boat. At the time of his recapture he was wearing a naval cap. He told Chief Smyth he found it in the boat.
‘Here,’ he said, as he was being marched out of the police station by military police, ‘this is not mine. It fits me perfectly, though. Please give it to the man who owns it and see he gets the boat back, too.’
Probe Escape
How Rabe escaped so easily is now being investigated by a court of inquiry.
The uniform he was wearing had been placed in his room in preparation for his discharge Thursday. Due to some hitch in arrangements for his return to a Northern Ontario internment camp, his removal was delayed.
Rabe had been in the hospital a month for treatment of lesions resulting from an appendix operation years ago. He was seriously ill less than two weeks ago, hospital authorities said. He was one of the half a dozen German prisoners being treated in the hospital, it was stated.
All the time he was on the open water, 250 veteran guards and squads of police were searching the Don valley on ‘positive’ information that he had been seen in the vicinity.
Photo Caption:
THE GERMAN EAGLE BETRAYS ESCAPED NAZI PRISONER
The German eagle was the downfall yesterday of Carl Rabe, Nazi submarine officer who escaped Thursday from Christie St. hospital. The eagle insignia on the German’s uniform was recognized by George Spear, a special constable, as the escaped prisoner passed his house in Long Branch. Rabe was captured by Spear 15 minutes after he had landed at the foot of 25th St. from a rowboat in which he spent all day yesterday out on Lake Ontario. ABOVE, Rabe, centre, is shown being led away by Pte. W. F. Kavanagh, left, and Sergt. H. McAllen of the military police.
