The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-12-17
WAR PRISONER SINCE E'17B BACK
 HOME AT LAST
Alsatian Tells of Being Drafted By Germans,
 Then Jailed

Mulhouse, Alsace, Dec. l7-(uP)- After 20 years as a war prisoner, during which all his friends and relatives believed he had died, Alphonse Bientz has returned home from prison in Germany, His detention is believed to be the longest of any prisoner of war taken by either side in the World War.
 Bientz was of a Francophile family and served as a guide to the French troops who occupied Mulhouse, his native city in Alsace, in the early months of the war. He did not try to hide his activi- ties from the former German functionaries who still held their posts. He paid for his indiscretion in a few days when q German push drove the French out of the town and brought the Germans back.
 Arrested, BientS immediately was incorporated in the l29th Ger man infantry and sent as Q front line soldier to the Russian front, where the regiment was used in the most dangerous attacks. While many of his comrades were killed Bientz managed to aScape injury until September, 1916, That month the regiment was thrown into the battle of Kowl and he was wounded in the head,
 Listed As Dead
 While he lay for days in no mans land his papers were re. turned to his family and he was listed as dead. From then on his family never heard from him until he returned home recently from his long prison Odyssey,
 After the war his mother was granted a pension by France, She died In 1927 in the belief that her son had been killed on the Rus sian front. In August, 1886, his only surviving sister received Q letter from the police chief of Riedisheim informing her that her brother still was imprisoned In the fortess of Glat2 in Upper Silesia, A year of Negotiations finally brought his release,
 Alphonse Bient2 reached Null house in Q miserable state. He had not eaten for four days, and the 1000 marks which had been given him on his liberation from prison had been taken from him, because, ho was told, it was forbidden to export marks.
 He told the story & his years in priJon. When the Austrian nurses found him on tho battlefield he was half dead, Operated on in Poland, hc gradually recovered and was transported to the military hospital Of StrauSsberg near Ber- lin. The German authorities never admitted his identity, He was sentenced to various terms at hnSd-labor, Finally he revolted and escaped from prison,
 Served In Many Prisons
 Ize was captured again and this time sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. He was transported from prison to prison, and there iS hardly a prison In Hanover, Werl, Cologne, Muhlheim, the Ruhr, Calwitz and scores of other towns that he docs not know Intimately, After c hunger strike, Bient2 was sent to conValeseent home in Upper Silesia where ono of his doctors became interested In his case and informed the French consul In Leipzig, This led to his liberation.
 Bientz insists that there arc hundreds of prisoners, officially known as lost, who arc still im- prisoned at Werl. They are mostly political prisoners who are forced to make shoes for nationalist Spain, he declares. When he was released the Oberwachtmeister told Bientz:
 GO and tell France and AlsacC what Germany Is like but watch yourselfl We will soon retake AlSace and then, you'd better watch outI" Bient2 says he has no interest in travelling to Germany,