Newsman's Break

A rawboned, rangy, veteran Canadian woodsman is Norman Charles Phillips, 24-year-old reporter for the Toronto Star. Fortnight ago the Star sent Norman Phillips, driving an old flivver, north to Sudbury to cover the escape of two German prisoners from a nearby concentration camp. Phillips stayed five days, saw the prisoners safely rounded up, wrote his story, headed back toward Toronto. Nearing home he met a fair-haired man in grey trousers and blue coat, walking toward him along the highway.

Not for nothing had Newsman Phillips spent five days watching Nazi soldiers strut about a prison compound. He noticed the hiker's walk, turned his car around, halted, asked for the man's identification card. Said the fair-haired stranger in a heavy German accent: "I am on my way to Ottawa."

"Hop in," said Norman Phillips. With his passenger he speeded back to Huntsville, where he had passed a detachment of Canadian troops parading to church. As he pulled into the town, he saw them still marching jauntily up the street. As the car slowed, his passenger jumped out and started walking fast, away from the highway.

Reporter Phillips overtook the column, cried to the last man: "Sergeant, that man is a German! He has no registration card." Said the sergeant: "You'll have to tell one of the officers." Phillips hurried on, caught up with a lieutenant. Said the lieutenant: "You follow him--we'll catch up with you after the parade." Finally, Phillips spoke to a policeman watching the parade. They jumped into a car and drove after the man. He clicked his heels as they overtook him, saluted, was pinched. He turned out to be Rons Kempe, another escaped Nazi, a veteran of the Polish campaign.

Newsman Phillips got his first by-line but no beat on his own story. The Star did not publish over the Labor Day weekend and the Toronto Globe & Mail told it two days before.

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