DAILY EXPRESS
..
How I fooled Chinese.
by escaper Frank
From DENIS BLEWETT: Hongkong, Monday
BAREFOOT and exhausted, 37-year-old Hongkong police inspector Frank Knight swam to freedom this morning after five weeks as a prisoner of the Chinese.
He had climbed out of a window in the small, bare room at a soldiers' hostel where he had been kept captive,
And in a moonlit dash for the Hongkong frontler he waded and swam across 25 miles of rice paddles and two rivers.
He Ras still soaking when સ passing military jeep found him, shortly before eight o'clock.
He had crawled through a drain into British terri- tory after nearly 12 hours on the run.
Inspector Knight, a 37- Year - old bachelor ARGITI Dagenham, Essex, Was dragged across the border on October 14 after ah argu- ment over a border fence.
Well fed
pr
Today he said he was well treated ira China with meals of pork, vegetable and rice washed down with a bottle of beer or a glass of port wine.
At the hostel, however, he studied the guards' routine. prised up some window bolts. and waited his chance to escape.
His opportunity came last night when one of the two guards was taking a shower and the other went to answer the phone.
He slipped the window bolts loose. opened the window and climbed out. Knight said bus escape probably was not discovered until this morning "The lighting was bad: I tucked
FRANK KNIGHT Loosened bolts
my mosquito net in and sort of bundled it up on the side of the bed where the guard would lock in through the window.
"The border was only five miles away as the crow files, but the way I went was more like 25 miles."
It was only when he got back that Knight Isarmed that negotiations to exchange him for five cap- bured Chinese Communisīs had been going on.
Government men went to an agreed rendezvous on Saturday with the Ave but Knight didn't show up.
The apparent ease with which he was able to leave his jail, however, prompted reports that the Chinese turned a "blind eye" to his escabe.
Hongkong officials claimed they had discovered that Chinese border guards knew that Knight was free on hour before he crossed the frontier.
Knight said tonight he doubted if the Chinese intended him to escape. But he was too tired and happy to argue.
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