P289

Aboard the German liner Bremen when she reached quarantine last week was a fat, middle-aged man who was listed as Herr Bennett Nash. Herr Nash, a lonely fellow, had spent most of the crossing in the ship's bar drinking whiskey neat. Surrounded by reporters and photographers, he smiled nervously, praised the skyline in guttural English, tried to explain that he was in the U. S. to pay a debt. Before he could finish his explanation Army officers whisked him away to forbidding old Castle William on Governor's Island, where he was given a pair of olive-drab dungarees to replace his double-breasted suit. For the second time in his life Grover Cleveland Bergdoll (as Prisoner 289) wore a uniform--the prison uniform--of the U. S. Army.

The first time was in 1920, when he spent two months of a five-year sentence on Governor's Island for skipping the Wartime draft. He escaped to Germany, where he remained for 19 years. There he wed a gardener's daughter, sired five children. Now living in Philadelphia with Grover Bergdoll's aging, militant mother, Mrs. Berta Bergdoll and five-year-old son Erwin (see cut) had to go to Governor's Island to greet him.

Dodger Bergdoll said he had returned to pay up, be with his family and raise them as good Americans. He may not have that privilege. The Army may retry, resentence him for his escape. The U. S. Department of Labor contends that he has renounced his U. S. citizenship, is therefore deportable as an undesirable alien. The various agencies still interested in Grover Bergdoll could let him serve his time, then return him to Nazi Germany, where he no longer wants to live.

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