Colditz Page 19

  From the trial itself it appears that Bednarski had been suborned by the Germans long before he went to Cracow. In the prison camp of Murnau he had been ordered by the Germans to simulate an escape so that he could be legitimately sent to Colditz. He was not a Polish officer and had not been in the Polish Army. The Poles attributed several failed escapes to his “informing”: in particular, the attempted escape or prospecting for an escape by four Polish officers on 24 April 1941. The four officers had already made sorties into the courtyard late at night. On this night, one of them was indisposed and remained in bed. That night the Germans surprised and caught them, and asked, “Only three? Where is the fourth?” This was just another piece of circumstantial evidence at the time, but it kept the Poles on the scent of a spy.

  On the occasion of the escape of some Polish officers from the hospital at Elsterhorst, a Polish captain, Aleksander Ligęza, was a genuine sick case—in fact the only one. Remaining behind, he managed to steal from the hospital office a report by Bednarski to the German Abwehr officer, pleading that it was not his fault that they had escaped, because he had reported the preparations for the escape to the Abwehr officer, who had done nothing about it in time to prevent it.

  On 21 July, Priem took the unprecedented step of announcing on Appell that Bednarski had disclosed no POW secrets to the German staff.

  After the war, Colonel Mozdyniewicz met Bednarski one day in a city street in Poland. He immediately informed the public prosecutor. Bednarski committed suicide.

  13

  No Coward Souls

  Summer and Early Autumn 1942

  AT THE END OF JULY Oberst Schmidt, the Kommandant, retired at the ripe age of seventy. His soldiers considered him a great soldier, austere, harsh but just. Although a Saxon he was a soldier of the old Prussian school. Punctual always, and at his office by 8 a.m., he inspected his staff daily and the POW camp more often than any other Kommandant. He was anti-Hitler before the war. He was intolerant of any officer who behaved in any way unbefitting his rank, and reduced one officer to the ranks for dishonesty. He never gave the Hitler salute. But he was known to have said: “The NSDAP [the Nazi Party] has given the German officer a status he did not have even in the reign of the Kaiser, so our loyalty is assured.”

  During the 20 June courtyard riot, the Kreisleiter had demanded that Schmidt give the order to open fire on the mob. Schmidt had replied, “Before I give orders like that I shall make sure from a legal expert that such an order is lawful.”

  His appeal to the Senior Officers of the different nationalities to maintain military discipline fell on rather stony ground. In his eyes only the Dutch and the Poles lived up to this. Eggers has written that “eventually the OKW was compelled to put an end to the mutinous situation by partially dissolving the Camp in 1943.”

  He retired to Dresden but had to move after the terrible air-raid in 1945. He was arrested by the Russian OGPU and imprisoned in no less than six different prison camps. He was never tried by the Russians and died in a hospital in Riga—Russian-controlled Estonia—in 1946 or 1947.

  The new Kommandant, Oberst Edgar Glaesche, was very much a new broom. He was born in 1899. He was of medium height, with a slight squint in one eye, much less imposing than Schmidt. He insisted on great thoroughness in all work, down to the last detail, and gave frequent pep-talks. It was an officer’s duty, he said, to set an example to the men. Correct application of the Geneva Convention and all its rules as regards the treatment of prisoners of war was insisted on. Prisoners must be made to behave themselves correspondingly. He required “watchfulness, circumspection, presence of mind, calm, and persistence” on the job. He would set an example. But he would not frequent the prisoners’ yard overmuch. He must seem to be what he was—the symbol of ultimate authority!

  One idea that Glaesche put into practice was calling special parades at any time of the night. It was asking for trouble. It started the “Appell war.” One night (29/30 July) there was a Strafappell (punishment Appell) for the French, who duly paraded. A general Appell called for 1 a.m. had just concluded, and the Goons had been greatly upset by its disruption. This took the form of loud animal and bird calls, a cockerel here, a cow there, mixed with wailing sirens and the sound of falling bombs. Far from stopping after the summoning of the Strafappell, the uproar grew noisier and noisier as the British, Polish and Dutch yelled from their windows. It was absolute pandemonium. The entire guard was called into the Hof and lined up facing the windows. Then the duty officer ordered them to take aim. A moment later a volley of shots rang out, smashing through the windows of the various quarters. Vandy earned ten days’ “solitary” for storming down in his pajamas to protest about the use of firearms on unarmed men.

  Eggers explains the shooting in this way:

  One of the guards, more weary than the rest at that time of night, did not hold the muzzle of his rifle high enough. In fact he let it droop so far that it was aimed at the head of a French officer standing close in front of him.

  “Höher,” bawled the Frenchman (“Higher”).

  His accent was wide of the mark, and so a guard down the line thought he heard the order “Feuer” (“Fire”).

  He let go. They all did.

  An inquiry was held at which the Kommandant presided and the story about the mistaken order to fire was given out as the official explanation. The Kommandant added that another midnight Appell would be called that night and, if a demonstration took place, midnight Appells would continue. Colonel Stayner then asked British officers to desist from vocal exercise at Strafappell that night.

  The Appell was not called. Some thought wiser counsels had prevailed and that the clause in Article 47 of the Geneva Convention, “collective penalties for individual acts are also prohibited,” would be observed. But at evening Appell Priem announced an Appell for 1 a.m. No sound of any kind greeted the announcement. Padre Platt wrote:

  The bell rang at 12.30a.m. and at a few minutes to one we (all nationalities) trickled down the staircase in stony silence. Priem counted the five companies and his usual dismissal, “Danke, mein Herren,” echoed hollowly on the huge walls. With soundless tread we glided back to quarters in a silence as solemn as a funeral.

  After this good behavior, Colonel Stayner expected the end of the matter. He was disappointed. On Saturday night an Appell was called for 11 p.m. This was attended in stony silence. It was over in two minutes. No count was taken. This ended the “Appell war.” Stayner nevertheless drafted a letter to Switzerland, our Protecting Power under the Geneva Convention, setting out a complaint.

  Lieutenant-Colonel David James Stayner of the Dorset Regiment was born in 1896 and he was familiarly known to the Colditz inmates as “Daddy” Stayner. White-haired, tall, erect and slim, his speech was always quiet and considered. He would give the impression of being a man of peace almost at any price. That does not do him justice because he was not a weak man—simply a man of experience—a diplomat. He had fought in the First World War from 1914, a Regular soldier, promoted to captain in August 1917, mentioned twice in dispatches, wounded. In 1919 he served with British forces in Russia.

  The Germans had selected him to replace Guy German. From their point of view it was not a bad choice. He did have a calming influence but he certainly did not try to curb or reduce escaping activity. He approached the problem of Colditz rather more as the Dutch did. Comparing him with Guy German, he was the shaped, formed, molded officer of the regular Army, whereas Guy German was the natural, respected leader for any guerilla campaign. Both aspects of character added richness to the alloy forming in the crucible of Colditz.

  The exact date of the discovery of a Polish-initiated tunnel under the paving stones in the ground-floor corridor of the Saalhaus is uncertain but its repercussions were serious. Eggers in his diary says it was “one day in August.” Padre Platt mentions the discovery, writing: “two Polish and one Belgian Officer were in cells … their tunnel was discovered on Sunday [i.e. 19 July].” Moreover, Priem�
��s announcement about Bednarski on Appell on 21 July had included an express denial that Bednarski had revealed this tunnel. The Poles were fully alive to Bednarski. It is not likely he gave the game away. Eggers’ story, here summarized, is almost certainly true.

  The special squad employed by Eggers to keep a constant watch on the movements of “Emil” spent much of its time “searching” as well. They were searching the Saalhaus corridor for “hides” and finding a likely paving stone, they lifted it and found a tunnel. There seemed no point in the tunnel. It led inside the Castle—not out. Only much later did the Germans realize that this tunnel was only the first of three tunnels all of which in their time headed for the main sewer under the POW courtyard.

  The Poles unfortunately had hidden some valuable escape aids in the tunnel which were promptly removed for examination. Eggers gives this account:

  It was used as a hiding place for various items, such as a homemade typewriter, some glasses with pieces of paper etc. The stuff was taken to Captain Lange and when he examined the pieces of paper he found that many different figures had been written. Captain Lange rightly assumed that this was some sort of code and after some trouble he managed to decipher the code and read on one of the pieces of paper, “If you escape, avoid the Central Station at Leipzig. Leave the train in time and take a tram to Wahren Station. There go back into the train.” Another read, “Phone Leipzig …” and gave the number. Other pieces were bills for tools delivered to the prisoners. Captain Lange checked the telephone number and found out the guilty person who had supplied the tools to the POWs. He was a soldier of the former Guard Company. We had often found new tools and now we knew who had supplied them. Later the Police searched his house at Leipzig and found more bills. His partner in crime was the Polish Lieutenant Niedenthal. The soldier was arrested at Mühlberg where he was then stationed and after being Courtmartialled he was shot at Torgau.

  According to Eggers, the German soldier had been, prior to the war, an electrical-equipment tradesman and had had business connections with Niedenthal. The prices he charged in the form of coffee and cigarettes seemed to the Germans very small compared to the risk he was taking (but see Chapter 15).

  Early in August some Russian POWs arrived in the Castle for delousing prior to going to work in the country. Their untoward appearance in the delousing shed near the Saalhaus corridor led to the discovery of two British officers, namely myself and Rupert Barry, who had started a tunnel in one corner. The reader need hardly guess where the tunnel was to lead!

  The German censors who also scrutinized all photos connected with Colditz Castle which were allowed to the POWs had overlooked one point. “Lange, the photographer, had presented a pre-war photo of the cobbled courtyard which could be purchased by the prisoners. Near the main archway, and the gates into the yard, a large manhole cover was plainly visible amongst the cobblestones. Now, and since before 1941, the manhole cover had disappeared. In other words it had been cobbled over. I, as a civil engineer and with my previous knowledge of the run of the drains from my canteen tunnel, knew precisely where the main drain led—namely out of the courtyard under the main gates. If I could get into this drain, big enough to take a man on his hands and knees, I would be able to get outside those courtyard gates.

  However, I knew of the stout brick wall built across the drain just beyond the corner of the delousing shed. This decided the location of the new tunnel entrance in the delousing shed—only a matter of three or four yards from the drain and beyond the wall.

  The Poles had evidently worked out this information too. They had not told Dick Howe, who had taken over from me as escape officer in the spring. From Eggers’ statements, it appears that at first the Germans did not realize what the Polish tunnel was heading for. They certainly did not appreciate where the Lazaret tunnel (in which Airey Neave was at one time involved) was vaguely heading for. When however they found my tunnel entrance—it became clear what the POWs were after.

  The delousing shed was a temporary structure in the courtyard built to house the portable ovens, which looked like huge boilers and into which clothing was put and baked in order to kill lice and other pests. The sudden arrival of the Russians necessitated the use of these portable ovens, and Rupert and I were caught red-handed. The boilers were hardly used once in six months. It was unfortunate the Russians arrived just during British working hours!

  The incident, however, enabled the British to make the first contact ever with Russian soldiers, who were to be housed in the town. They were a sight of which the Germans should have been ashamed. Living skeletons, they dragged their fleshless feet along the ground in a decrepit slouch. These scarecrows were the survivors of a batch ten times their number which had started from the Eastern front. They were treated like animals, given no food and put out into the fields to find fodder amidst the grass and roots. Their trek into Germany took weeks.

  With tunnels discovered, the “do or die” attempt appeared the only way—or so it did to Flight-Lieutenant “Bag” Dickinson. Because there were so many POWs doing “solitary” confinement sentences, the Germans had to supplement the seven prison cells in the Castle precinct by hiring more in the town—as I have explained in Chapter 8. The normal Castle cell was about ten feet by six feet, and two to a cell was nowadays the norm. So Colditz could only house fourteen POWs at a time doing prison sentences of anything from five to twenty-eight days. The waiting queue was getting longer and longer. The old town jail provided the answer. It was not in use, but on the first floor were ten “good,” old-fashioned cells and a guardroom. There was a small exercise yard. It was ten minutes’ walk from the Castle. On 18 August after an hour of “exercise” in the diminutive yard, with a sentry in front and one at the rear with revolvers in their holsters, a procession of ten POWs walked back through the prison door. The sentry in front proceeded to mount the stairs. This was Bag’s moment. From the middle of the procession, he ran a few yards to a side wall with a locked door in it. The lock handle gave him a foothold. He leaped and grabbed the top of the eight-foot wall. He swung over and dropped into an orchard beyond. Over another wall and out on to a street. He grabbed a bicycle—miraculously unlocked—and was away like greased lightning. The second sentry had hesitated to shoot because the prison was surrounded by houses with windows close by. He was also slow on the draw.

  Unfortunately “Bag” was not properly equipped for his escape. The Germans issued their codeword “Mäusefalle” (“Mousetrap”) to all police stations up to 100 miles around. Dickinson was caught by the police that evening in Chemnitz about forty miles away.

  Wing Commander Douglas Bader (WingCo) had arrived on 16 August.

  On 20 August the French Lieutenant Delarue, dressed as a German painter, unsuccessfully tried to bluff his way out of the garrison yard after side-stepping from the park walk. He did not possess the correct pass. On 25 August Flight-Lieutenant Forbes and Lieutenant Lee tried a “break-away” from their guards in the streets of Leipzig.

  In England Paddon, after a short leave and promotion to wing commander, was sent off on a tour of operational units to give advice to the many aircrews soon to face the possibility of capture. One day late in August he was called up by MI9. An alleged Belgian was being held in custody under grave suspicion of being a spy. The man was claiming to have escaped from Colditz. He had swum to a British ship off the coast of Algeçiras and stowed away. On arrival in England he was handed over and had been in prison a month. Would Paddon be prepared to see this man and identify him?

  Paddon entered the man’s cell and faced none other than his Belgian friend Lieutenant Louis Rémy who had been the one to get away, when he, Paddon and Just had made the escape bid from a Colditz hospital visit in April of that year, 1942.

  At his own request, Paddon returned to an operational unit, but was not allowed to fly over enemy-held territory for fear of torture and perhaps death if the Gestapo got him. He commanded several airfields, was again promoted, and as Group Captain Paddon c
ontrolled the great Coastal Command base at Thornaby, Yorkshire.

  Later he wrote his autobiography of the war years. His memoirs make fascinating reading and it is sad that permission for their publication has not been granted by his widow. Hopefully she will soon relent.*

  On 1 September, “the Navy” arrived in Colditz from Stalag VIIIB, Lamsdorf, in Silesia, where they had got to know Douglas Bader. The group consisted of sixteen when they set out and fifteen when they arrived. Lieutenant-Commander W. L. (Billie) Stephens, who had been captured during the St. Nazaire raid in March 1942, was missing. He had climbed on to the roof of the train they had changed from at Gross Bothen. This train took off in another direction. But Stephens was caught later, still on the train roof. Among them were three ERAs (Engine-Room Artificers), Lister, Hammond and Johnson, who as chief petty officers should not have been in Colditz at all. But at Lamsdorf they had simply been promoted in order to increase their chances of staying with the officers they had befriended.

  Mike Moran recalls the following story about Bader, whom he first met in Lamsdorf, where Douglas had been sent for medical treatment. Characteristically, he was determined to escape, despite his obvious disadvantages. Shortly after his arrival at Lamsdorf, however, luck seemed to come his way when a working party was required for a job alongside a Luftwaffe air base.

  The working party was selected and the modus operandi planned with infinite care. But the difficulties were all too obvious—not least among them Bader’s “fame” in Germany. When news got round that he was in Lamsdorf, the Kommandant was deluged with requests from local bigwigs who wanted a chance to see him. Clearly Douglas wouldn’t be away long before his absence was discovered.