With Anzac Day 2021 approaching, I write about another not so famous escape by some not so famous Aussies but still heroic in their own right. My interest in this began with a report to officials by Captain Mark Strelley Fryar of England who had escaped many times and most recently was one of the 24 who escaped on 19th March 1918 from Schweidnitz POW camp. He was recaptured and for his part in this escape, Fryar received a transfer to Holzminden POW camp, solitary confinement and a court-martial hearing. Here he met Couston and Fenton.
Part of the military code was that you were expected to escape whether English, NZ, Aussie or Canadian. Fryar’s report from the Officer’s Camp at Holzminden was about the random shooting of two Aussies, Lt Alexander Wallace Couston 10th Battalion AIF and 2nd Lt Cyril Boyd Fenton RFC. It seemed he created quite a stir. He’s not writing his report to condemn the men but as a condemnation of the behaviour of the Germans during the men’s escape.
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| Lt Alec Couston |
Coustan b 19 June 1893 Launceston, Tasmania had started his work with experience as a telephone mechanic and had enlisted in Adelaide in September 1914. He began his war experience at Gallipoli on 27 May 1915 and joined the AFC on 5 May 1917 after asking for a course of instruction in aviation. He became a Lieutenant on 15 August 1917 was reported to be missing in action on 22 February 1918 and reported to be in German hands.
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| Red Cross request for bread |
He ended up in Holzminden Pow camp. His escape partner was Cyril Boyd Fenton, a young bank clerk from Terang, Ballarat Victoria. Born in 1897 Fenton had started in the AIF and then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in September 1916 Fenton had met with a serious accident involving a fall of 100 feet and remained in hospital for seven months. One message sent to those at home was “Cyril Conscious Recovery Probable”. He resumed duty in March 1918 but only 12 days into March he was a prisoner of war- a guest of the Germans.
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| Cyril Boyd Fenton Flying Accident |
The men were buoyed by the escape of the 29 from Holzminden on 24 July 1918 and planned their escape. In the attempted escape by Fenton and Coustan on 30 September 1918 Coustan was shot and wounded without challenge. For his trouble Coustan received a bullet wound that had its entrance through the lower lip and exit right of the mandible which fractured his jaw and eventually required splinting. His second injury was a flesh wound to the arm.
The escape attempt was described in this article in the Herald, Melbourne 18/12/1918.
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| Report of the Holzminden shooting - Melbourne Herald 18/12/1918 |
Fryar and others were appalled at this cruel deed. The Commandant of the Camp, Commandant Niemeyer was reported to be very vindictive to the soldiers.
The senior British Office Commander Bingham VC was denied avenues of communication to the German War Office and to representatives in Neutral Holland. Captain Fryar put in his own report on the shooting on 11th October.
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| Fryar's report on the shooting 11/10/1918 |
Lt Eric Fulton also wrote about the attempt in his memoir several years later.
“About this time a man concealed himself, toward evening under the parcels room intending at night to cut a way through the wires of the ‘verboten zone’ and get away. He got through the first barrier and was engaged upon the outer one when a guard who had been bribed to let him through shot him point blank in the face. He was a mess. Months later he returned with a wired-up jaw and a remodelled face. Nice man that guard. I sometimes wonder just how a man like that sees himself.”
The men were repatriated back to Australia after Armistice. Couston arrived in Australia on 13/5/1919 and was terminated due to medical unfitness in May 1920. He was mentioned in dispatches on 16 December 1919 for various services whilst in captivity and noted accordingly in the official records of the Air Ministry. He married Gertrude Evelyn Nichols on 25 July 1920 in Sydney and had one child Herbert Wallace Couston 1923-1997. Couston returned to assist in the World War II effort. He died on the 13th of April 1968 in Pasadena, Mitcham City, South Australia.
Unfortunately for Fenton, life back in Australia was short. Little is known about him. He died on 21 January 1922 age 22.
LEST WE FORGET
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM
ANZAC DAY 2021
