| Surname: | Fleet |
| Initials: | B D |
| Rank: | Lance Corporal |
| Army Number: | NK/3 |
| Notes: | CMP/RMP Enlisted Royal Army Ordnance Corps, transferred to the CMP. Extract from the Coventry Evening Telegraph, 5/1/1957. Army Hold Soldier Who Returned From Russians. The War Office stated to-day that Lance-Corporal Fleet, who went over to the Russians in 1954, was now in custody with the British Army of the Rhine. Fleet is now undergoing interrogation. A War Office spokesman said "Fleet." who is in the Royal Military Police disappeared from their depot at Woking in 1954. "We understand that he was turned over to the West German civil police about a week ago, but whether he went to Eastern Europe for political reasons is one of the matters which will have to be dealt with in the present investigation. Fleet was born in Brighton. The War Office would not disclose his present address. Cured of Convictions. According to German police, he was handed over from Communist East Germany on December 19. Fleet joined the Army in 1943, serving at first in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and then in the Royal Military Police. West German border police at Hof, Bavaria, said last night that when fleet was handed over to them by the East Germans he told them that he was cured of the conviction that Communism was good. He told them that he deserted from Britain after gaining the conviction in the Far East that he could find good people only in the Communist world. He reached East Germany by way of West Berlin. HJe was welcomed at Soviet HQ in Karlshorst, but the Russians then handed him over to their security service. He refused to become a spy and was imprisoned in Bautzen an Dresden. The police said that they had passed him on to the Americans. An American Army spokesman at Heidelberg said that a man identifying himself as Fleet, was handed over to the British on December 31. A similar story appeared in the Liverpool Echo, 5/1/1957 |