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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 7, 2008 16:34:49 GMT 12
This is something rather odd that I happened upon while searching Papers Past for references to Sockburn:
From The Grey River Argus, 22 December 1917, Page 3 Personal Pars.
"Flight-Lieutenant D. Harkness, of Nelson, the New Zealand aviator who was interned in Holland and given leave of absence on parole in order to visit his home, arrived in Christchurch this week and visited the Aviation School at Sockburn. He shortly returns to his home in Nelson, and then returns to Holland."
How fascinating. The Netherlands were supposedly a neutral country in the Great War, but had strong leanings towards German views and thus were in a similar postion I guess to Spain in WWII. I had always thought that prisoners interned in neutral countries were normally held for a short time only and then escorted home to their own country. Did Harkness sit out the rest of war in a Dutch prison after his trip home?
Donald Ernest Harkness DSC had been forced to land on Dutch territory while on a RNAS bombing raid on the 17th of September 1916. So he'd been in prison over a year when he got his holiday at home. You'd think they'd just let him go by then. He was killed on the 12th of December 1929 while test flying a Dornier Libelle, crashing into the sea off Milford Beach at Auckland.
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