21 NOV 1967
Daily Mirror
HOW I WALKED BAREFOOT FROM
By MIRROR REPORTERS
BRITISH police inspector Frank
Knight, kidnapped thirty-six days ago by a Chinese mob, staggered bare- foot back to Hong Kong yesterday after a fantastic twenty-five-mile flight to freedom through the rice fields.
A few hours after he had been found by a Gurkha border patrol, 38-year-old Knight, pale and with bloodshot eyes, coolly told reporters: "I thought I had been kept long enough.”
Then the ex-rugger player from Dagenham, Eessex. launched, in matter-of-
fact
into
the
voice. astonishing account of
his twelve-hour
dash
from captivity, across two rivers, barbed wire barri- cades,
and finally
through a drain.
A in ob of Chinese peasants dragged Inspec- tor Knight across the Man Kam To bridge op October 16. He was taken to a hostel at Shum Chun. five miles away.
Chance
Knight said that his chance to escape came at about 8 p.m. on Sun- day. One of his two guards was taking મૈં shower-the other went to answer the telephone.
He said: "I slipped the bolts of the window in my ground - floor room, hopped out into the gar- den, and set off for the border.
"As the crow flies, it was about five miles. I
went about twenty-five." The Inspector went on: "I made my way across
I crossed rice
fields, ditches,
two rivers, and
then managed to crawl through a drain to Hong Kong
some paddy fields to a hilltop. Then I went down through quite a big village, through quite a lot of rice, along a num- ber of ditches, through sugar cane and towards the border at Nga Yiu.
"I arrived not far from British territory, and I saw a sentry in front of me.
I lay in the ditch for about forty-five minutes,
Inspector Frank Knight yesterday. He told reporters: "I decided I'd had enough."
and then the sentry put his rifle on his shoulder and walked off towards the east."
Inspector Knight said: "I made a dash across while his back was to me. I crossed the first river the expecting to find border fence, but dis- covered another river.
"So I quickly crossed the second river. Part of the fence is over #
drain and I managed to crawl through the drain to British territory.
"I first met a woman farmer, who gave me a pair of sandals. Then I met a military jeep and was given a lift back to
Fant said that dur- ing detention he had no work to do at all.
"They gave me a few Chinese magazines to
RED CHINA TO FREEDOM
-by Inspector Frank Knight
read and the works of Mao Tse-tung, but there were no attempts to in- doctrinate me."
Knight said that he tried to stretch out each of the things he did.
"I tried to take an hour to do each thing. For instance, I spent an hour tidying
the up
room.
"I spent an hour a day doing mental arithmetic." And he added with a laugh; "But I am not prepared to do any now."
He said that his escape probably was not dis- covered until yesterday morning.
"The electricity is very poor, and therefore the lighting was bad in the room.
Guards
"I tucked my mosquito net in, and
of sort bundled it up on the side of the bed where the guard would look in through the window."
Knight went on:
There were four guards watching me in a two- on, two-off duty squad. I was well treated.
"Mostly I had por (vegetables and rice) to eat, a little fruit, some- times a bottle of beer, sometimes a glass of port wine."
Knight was convinced that he had been cap- tured by accident.
Was
He said: "I caught up in a surge of
After 36 days
in detention
I thought I
had been kept long enough"
people as they tried to rush back to China after a brief trip to the Hong Kong side illegally.
I
was accidentally
carried on to Chinese soll I suggested I should be returned immediately to Save embarrassment. They said I had better wait to see what hap- pened.
"I waited until 1 thought I had given the authorities a good chance to do what they could.
After thirty-six days cooped up in a room I decided 1 bad had enough."
Telephone
One of the first things Knight did after his es- cape was to telephone his widowered 77-year-old father, Mr. George Knight. at Grove- gardens. Dagenham.
He told him: "I'll be coming home in the New Year."
Inspector Knight, a bachelor, has been in the Hong Kong police since 1954. He has two brothers, both policemen, and eight sisters.
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