§ 29. Mr. LEONARD LYLEasked the Secretary of State for War whether he has yet received any further details with respect to the circumstances of the brutal murder by Bolsheviks of Captain W. R. Frecheville, Royal Engineers, and Lieutenant H.J. Couche, M.C., Machine Gun Corps; and whether any other British officers, so far as he knows, are in the Bolsheviks' hands!
§ The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Churchill)As regards the first part of the question, no report of the murder of these two officers has been received from the Soviet Government, and, on the other hand, Litvinoff has informed His 1974 Majesty's representative at Copenhagen that the competent Soviet authorities, Rostov-on-Don, have stated in reply to his Government's inquiries, that they have no knowledge whatever of the incident referred to and dismiss the story of capture and execution as an invention on the part of contra-revolutionary Russian newspapers. In spite of energetic inquiries instituted by the War Office no information has yet been forthcoming to confirm the account given by the fianceé of the Russian interpreter to Captain Frecheville. As regards the second part of the question, eleven British officers (formerly attached to the British Mission, Vladivostock) taken prisoners in Siberia by Soviet troops are still detained by the Soviet Government of Russia.