Escape #5: June 9, 1918
The early morning hours were dark. The moon was only 1% illuminated that night as it transitioned from waning to waxing. Around 3:16am, three figures crept in the darkness near the main gate of the stockade. A guard heard or saw the movement and commanded "Halt!" but apparently one of the figures did not, so the guard fired his shotgun, striking one of the figures in the right abdomen. The other figures immediately surrendered.
The wounded figure was Arthur Hueller. He was transported to the base hospital where he was given surgical care to remove some of the buckshot and repair torn organs, but he died a few days later. Hueller was reported to be an electrician and wireless operator (radio expert) and supposedly was caught in a sting operation that was responsible for leaking secrets about the American mercantile fleet movement.
​​
The next day, the Chattanooga Daily Times read, "The attempt to escape was frustrated by the quick action of one of the guards, who immediately opened fire..." On the 14th on page 5, The Chattanooga Daily Times again said, "Hueller was shot in the abdomen and his intestines perforated with buckshot discharged by the guard who fired when he heard a suspicious noise that indicated someone was prowling about the stockade."
​
Hueller represents the first time lethal force had been used against an escapee. He was ordered to halt, he did not, the guard shot first and asked questions later. But there was a second account of this incident that said otherwise. In 1927, a former prisoner named Erick Posselt wrote an account of his experience at Fort Oglethorpe's War Prison Barracks No. 2. It was published in the popular magazine American Mercury. On pages 321-322, Posselt depicts the tragedy that night as an unwarranted shooting. He claims Hueller was discovered at a point between the inner and outer perimeter fences when he was ordered to halt. He stood up, put his hands in the air, and surrendered. He had no means of escaping or any way to cause the guards harm when the guard shot him from a distance of four feet away. Posselt describes it as a "cold-blooded killing." ​​​
The Chattanooga News
The Chattanooga News
The Chattanooga News
​While Posselt was justified in grieving his campmate, the rule in the camp about the perimeter fences was the "dead line," a zone beginning 30 feet inside the inner fence. If a prisoner crossed this line they could be shot without any questions. While Posselt was justified in grieving his campmate, and was correct in that Hueller had no way of harming a guard or running any further, Hueller had crossed the dead line.
​​
The reporters mention a so-called "mystery" surrounding Hueller's last request before dying. He asked that Masonic Lodge #242 in Monterey, Mexico, and a "John F. Bernhagen, Security Building, Minneapolis, Minn.," be notified of his death. The June 14th edition of the Chattanooga News claimed that both the Lodge and Bernhagen were notified about Hueller's death and said that both sources denied knowing Hueller. The article insinuates that Hueller intended for these notifications to let his spy network know he was no longer active, and that their denial of knowing him was just protecting German secrets. One questions how "active" Hueller really could have been as a spy while confined at Fort Oglethorpe.
​​
Hueller was buried two days later at National Cemetery, Chattanooga, TN.
Arthur Hueller headstone
Chattanooga National Cemtery
Photo credit Tom Bodkin.