Odyssey of Axel

Axel Gorm Andersen, who lives in Woodside, L. I., is five. Last spring, when the Nazis invaded Norway, little Axel found himself in Trondheim, 4,000 miles from home. Mrs. Andersen had taken Axel to show him to his great-aunt and left him there for a visit, never dreaming that the Nazi war machine would sweep that far north.

There was nothing for Axel to do but stare, big-eyed, at the Nazi war machine and wait. In the U. S., Father & Mother Andersen spent four months sending frantic wires to Washington, asking for help. They appealed at last to the International Red Cross in Geneva.

Next thing Axel knew, he was soaring south across Germany, tagged and addressed to Mr. Axel Andersen in the U. S. A Lufthansa plane landed him in Lisbon. The Clipper was so full of diplomats that even Axel couldn't be squeezed in, so he was put aboard the American Export liner Siboney. Miss Helen Cederlind, a pretty Norwegian, who was going to the U. S. to marry a U. S. Army engineer, promised to keep an eye on him. Everybody kept an eye on him. A Frenchman played a game with Axel: he could make one of Axel's toys disappear, and tell Axel, "Whistle for it." Then Axel's toy would miraculously reappear from under the Frenchman's coat. The game broke up when Axel grabbed the Frenchman's hat and hurled it overboard, shrieking: "Whistle for it."

When the Siboney ran into a storm, most of the passengers got sick and went below. Someone missed Axel and started a feverish hunt for him. He was found sitting in one of the lifeboats, dangling his legs over the side and whooping every time the ship rolled.

Last week a thankful father and mother met Axel on a Jersey City pier and took him home to their modest flat. Axel greeted callers by bowing stiffly from the waist. What amazed Axel was the amount of butter on his mother's table. What amazed his mother was the way, when she started to turn on the lights, little Axel shouted to her to wait, then rushed to the windows and pulled down the shades.

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