Brig. Cartwright begins investigation

Brig. Cartwright learnt about the American loss of lives from his colleagues at the US legation further along the Thunstrasse. Now the mystified attaché was impatient to learn from the Swiss how or why the three Allied men had died.

Unwilling to be kept waiting by the host country's complacent authorities, the suspicious brigadier embarked on an investigation of his own. He had, at first, no access to his prime witness, Rfm. J.F. Welsh. The lone South African, who was recovering in a Bellinzona hospital from nothing more serious than frostbite in both feet after his ordeal, was being held incommunicado for a fortnight under the évadé quarantine regulation by the army's Territorial Service (responsible for the border areas).

Brig. Cartwright snapped into action as soon as the Territorial Service released Welsh into his care on 3 February. He ushered the seven Commonwealth survivors into his office and listened, with growing dismay, to their narrations. On 5 February he got the leaders of the three escape groups – Rfm. J.F. Welsh, Cpl. J.W. Rowe, and Pte. W. Frost – to sign typewritten statements summarizing their individual experiences. The statements were necessarily brief and devoid of accusations, as Brig. Cartwright did not wish to pre-empt the expected official Swiss investigation into the tragedy. He trusted the depositions would serve as a basis for further, more probing questioning by the Swiss authorities. The other four men were asked to sign brief corroborating declarations.[4]
 

Military attaché determines deaths are attributed to criminal negligence by Swiss border guards

Since there was no earthly reason to doubt the survivors' stories or the veracity of the seven statements and supporting declarations, the military attaché was convinced he had watertight evidence to show that the murky business on the mountain which had ended in three Allied deaths could be ascribed to the criminal negligence of two Swiss border guards who had patrolled the area in question on 20 January.

Brig. Cartwright cabled his findings to the War Office in London on 7 February. He explained that the escape party had had a hard climb, with little food, in abnormally cold weather, over mountainous country covered in fairly deep snow. He wrote how the men had already been well within Switzerland when they were halted by two Swiss soldiers who, instead of taking them to the nearest and most accessible control post, ordered them to return up the mountain in the direction in which they had just come. "It must have been quite evident that some of the party were unfit to make the ascent," Cartwright asserted, adding that the soldiers were never seen again by any member of the party, nor did any rescue party appear. He told the War Office:

Brig. Cartwright also advised the War Office that he was detaining the seven men in Switzerland until the matter was cleared up, "in case are required to give evidence before a Swiss court."[6] Under international law the ex-POWs should have quit neutral territory forthwith, since in 1945 there were no obstacles to their immediate departure (the French border in the west was wide open).(Continued)