Colditz Page 20

  The sick bay was the second hut in from the main gate; the first was a guard hut, where outgoing working parties were checked. Before daylight the air-field party went through the usual routine at the guard hut: an argument was started and became a free for all. Bader slipped out of the sick bay; his replacement slipped in. The party marched off to the station and reached it and the hut at the air field without incident. Douglas was to be the “duty-room stooge” while others spied out the land.

  About mid-day a staff car pulled up outside. Two Luftwaffe officers entered the hut, bade Douglas “Wilkommen,” and took him to their mess, where he was wined and dined, enjoying every minute of it. Lamsdorf was informed by telephone. The Luftwaffe refused to return him until the next day. “He’s ours until tomorrow!” He got his spell in cells, of course.

  Bader arrived in Colditz a fortnight before “the Navy.” Mike Moran remembers well the shouts of welcome from the windows of the French, “Vive le Royal Navy!,” and the bugles blowing through the iron bars of the windows in the British quarters. He wondered what sort of a bedlam he had entered.

  At 8 a.m. next day they wearily descended the eighty-eight stone steps to the courtyard for morning Appell. When the count was over the German duty officer read out the names of those who had arrived the previous evening. Everyone back to their rooms, except them.

  Into the courtyard came a civilian with a camera, guards carrying a small table, fingerprint equipment and other items, and a Hauptmann with a large folder. In a corner of the courtyard, between the chapel and the entrance to the British quarters, the equipment was set up. Mike was the first to be dealt with. For the photograph, he stood behind the stand which already held a card with his number—110599. He wasn’t asked to smile!

  Through the window bars the other prisoners were looking down. As the photographer pressed the button on his camera—crash! Two water bombs landed on the fingerprint table, breaking the glass slab, sending cards and ink-pad flying. More water bombs came down, one hitting the photographer, another one of the guards. From the windows came shouts and cat-calls. The guards shouldered their rifles, pointing them at the windows. The German officer shouted the usual threat, “Von den Fenster zurück, oder ich schiesse!” It was ignored—the cat-calls continued. The order came to shoot. Two or three shots were fired at the windows, but by then they were empty.

  Mike was still standing behind the number board, wondering for the umpteenth time since the previous evening what sort of place he had arrived at. Guards were placed at the entrance doors to the prisoners’ quarters. The naval contingent were hustled through the gate to the German courtyard. There the remaining identity photographs were taken.

  That was his introduction to Oflag IVC. But it had not yet finished.

  The Colditz “old lags” decided to have some fun at the new boys’ expense. Howard Gee, who spoke German perfectly, was togged out in the best pieces of home-made German officer’s uniform, converted from a Dutch uniform for the occasion (and removed from its hiding place). He was accoutered as the German camp doctor, complete with stethoscope, accompanied by his medical orderly, alias Dominic Bruce, in white overalls, carrying a large bowl of blue woad—mainly theater paint—and a paintbrush. No sooner were the fifteen new arrivals let loose in the British day quarters than Gee and Bruce entered. Gee, in a stentorian voice, demanded that the newcomers parade before him. He inspected them, condemned them as lice-ridden, bellowed at them to remove their trousers, condemned them again in insulting language as being ridden with crabs and indicated to his orderly that their offending body areas and other excrescences be generously painted with the blue liquid, permeated with high-smelling lavatory disinfectant. The “Navy” seethed with suppressed indignation—but were covertly informed by the crowd of onlookers that what was being done to them had to be endured because any resistance, not to mention defiance, would bring diabolical retribution on everybody.

  To be fair to the newcomers, they had by this time divested the “doctor” of his stethoscope and they were about to smash it to smithereens when they were alerted to the horrors of immediate German revenge. The stethoscope happened to belong to the British camp doctor—and was the only one in the region. The fake camp doctor then retired from the scene with his orderly, leaving the Navy standing at ease with their trousers down, but not before he had harangued them once more in the most insulting language his German vocabulary could rise to.

  The Polish Lieutenant Żelaźniewicz escaped on 2 September from the park walk but was recaptured near Podelwitz, a local village.

  On 8 September, Colditz was inspected by a senior German officer, General Wolff, who was in charge of prisoners of war in Army District No. 4, Dresden. He inspected the camp and found everything to his satisfaction and the German staff efficient and in control. Fortunately for everybody, when he was driven away his back was turned to the Castle wall beside the moat bridge. If he had turned his head, he would have seen a sixty-foot length of blue and white checked (bedsack) rope dangling from a remote window high up in a Kommandantur attic. It was seen by a housewife from the village, who reported it to the duty officer.

  The day before, following upon an earlier order issued from General Wolff’s office, the Kommandant had instituted a reduction of surplus prisoners’ baggage. The British POWs had accumulated a substantial horde of private belongings which tended to clutter up the dormitories and also impede German searches. They were told to pack unwanted gear in large tea-chest-sized boxes, ex–Canadian Red Cross. These boxes were to be carefully labelled and stored until required. Some of the boxes contained books and were correspondingly heavy. Flight-Lieutenant Dominic Bruce, always known as the medium-sized man, fulfilled the role of a consignment of books complete with blue-check bedsack rope and equipment for an escape. All the boxes were duly carted away and manhandled by orderlies up a spiral staircase into an attic in the Kommandantur buildings. The doors were locked and Bruce was left to his own devices. During the night, he escaped, but not before he had inscribed on the empty box: “Die Luft in Colditz gefällt mir nicht mehr. Auf Wiedersehen! [The Colditz air no longer pleases me. Au revoir!]”

  Bruce reached Danzig and tried to board a ship, as Paddon had done. He wasn’t caught until a week later, near the harbor basin at Danzig. He had made use of one of those silk maps from the cover of a book from the Lisbon “agent.” His story there was that he had jumped from a British plane over Bremen and had arrived in Danzig on a stolen bicycle. His bicycle, unluckily, had a local number on it. He was, however, sent to the RAF camp at Dulag Luft near Oberursel. There he was recognized by members of the German staff and for the second time he left for Colditz. It was perhaps artless of Bruce to write “Auf Wiedersehen” on the box when he really had “Goodbye” in mind. It was tempting fate.

  Things were hotting up for the new Kommandant. On 9 September, ten officers were found to be missing after the morning roll-call had been delayed—the count fudged, the parade recounted, dismissed and recalled—while Hauptmann Priem raged up and down the ranks. An identity check of all the POWs had to be instituted to confirm who exactly had got away. This took several hours. The “confusion” ploy was used because there was no way of properly concealing a number of absentees at one time.

  The escape plan had arisen one hot day in August 1942. Captain “Lulu” Lawton complained to me that a half-starved rat couldn’t find a hole big enough to squeeze through to escape from Colditz. If only, he lamented, he could think of a way. I told him to look for the enemy’s weakest point. Thinking aloud, I said, “I should say it’s Gephard’s own office. Nobody will ever look for an escape attempt being hatched in the German RSM’s office.”

  Lulu procured the services of the red-bearded Lieutenant van Doorninck to manufacture, with formidable skill, a key to open the intricate cruciform lock on the door to Gephard’s office. The plan evolved. Lulu had teamed up with Flight-Lieutenant “Bill” Fowler, and they made a foursome with van Doorninck and another Dutchman. Dick Howe
, as the new British escape officer, was in charge.

  I inspected the office. I saw that it was possible to rip up the floor under Gephard’s desk, pierce a wall eighteen inches thick, and have entry into a storeroom outside and below the office. From there, simply by unlocking a door, the escapers would walk out on to the sentry path surrounding the Castle. The plan was based on the fact that German NCOs occasionally came to the storeroom with Polish POWs who were working in the town of Colditz. They brought and removed stores, etc., arriving at irregular hours, mostly in the mornings, sometimes as early as 7 a.m., and seldom coming more often than twice a week.

  The escape party was increased to a total of six. Two more officers were therefore selected. They were Stooge Wardle and Lieutenant Donkers, a Dutchman. It was arranged that Lulu should travel with the second Dutchman, and Bill Fowler with van Doorninck. Sentries were changed at 7 a.m., so the plan was made accordingly. Van Doorninck, who spoke German fluently, would become a senior German NCO and Donkers would be a German private. The other four would be Polish orderlies. They would issue from the storeroom shortly after 7 a.m. Van Doorninck would lock up after him. The four orderlies would carry two large wooden boxes between them, the German private would take up the rear. They would walk along the sentry path past two sentries, to a gate in the barbed wire, where van Doorninck would order a third sentry to unlock and let them pass. The sentries—with luck—would assume that the “fatigue” party had gone to the storeroom shortly before 7 a.m. Once through the barbed wire the party would proceed downhill along the roadway which went towards the park.

  The plan necessitated the making of two large boxes in sections so that they would be passed through the hole into the storeroom, and yet of such construction that they should be very quickly assembled. This escape was to be a blitz job. The hole would be ready in a matter of three days. Experience was proving that long-term jobs involved too much risk.

  The hole was duly made, leaving a little to be knocked out at the last moment. The evening before the “off” (8 September), the six escapers, with myself and Lieutenant Derek Gill (who had been helping me dig the hole), were locked into Gephard’s office.

  At midnight there was an alarm. Germans were unlocking doors and the voice of Priem was heard in the corridor. He approached Gephard’s office door. The night-duty NCO asked: “Shall I open this door, Herr Hauptmann?”

  “Yes, indeed, I wish to check everything,” answered Priem.

  “It is the office of Oberstabsfeldwebel Gephard, Herr Hauptmann.”

  “Never mind. Open!” came the reply.

  There was a loud noise of keys and then Priem’s voice: “Ah, of course, Herr Gephard has many locks on his door. I had forgotten. Do not open, it is safe.”

  Between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. we finished off the hole and carefully conveyed the men and their equipment through. Derek and I then left the office having patched up the hole. A little later Dick Howe reported a perfect take-off.

  The morning Appell at 8:30 was going to cause trouble. By now, Dick had temporarily run out of inspiration. The Dutch dummies were no more. He might manage to conceal one absence, but six was an impossibility. So he did the obvious thing. He decided to lay in a reserve of spare officers for future escapes. Four officers were concealed in various parts of the Castle. There would be ten missing from the Appell. With luck the four hidden in the Castle would become “ghosts.” They would appear no more at Appells and would fill in blanks on future escapes. The idea was not unknown to the Germans, but it was worth trying.

  The 8 a.m. Appell mustered and, in due course, ten bodies were reported missing. By 11 a.m. the Germans had discovered the four ghosts and were beginning to conclude, after their first impression that a joke was being played on them, that six men had in fact escaped.

  Dick was satisfied at having increased the start of the six escapers by a further three hours. Later in the day the Jerries, after questioning all sentries, had suspected the fatigue party, and working backwards to the store room, had discovered the hole. There was much laughter, even among the Jerries, at the expense of Gephard, under whose desk the escape had been made! The reader can imagine the disappointment and fury of Priem at the escapers having eluded his grasp so narrowly during the night!

  Geoffrey Wardle and his Dutch colleague, Lieutenant Donkers, were unlucky. They were recaught and back in the Castle before the tumult of the roll-call was over. They were noticed by the Bürgermeister of a nearby village called Commichau as they passed through. He knew everybody in the village and immediately became suspicious. A local peasant woman found a number of discarded uniforms in a nearby wood and reported this at once. Thus the Germans knew that more than two had escaped. Eventually, they established the correct number at six. Lulu Lawton and Ted Beets were accosted and arrested at Döbeln railway station later in the day. Meanwhile van Doorninck and Bill Fowler carried on and reached Switzerland safely eighty-seven hours after leaving the Castle.

  * Editors were not able to verify further updates to this information as of publication.

  14

  Swift Be Thy Flight

  Late Autumn 1942

  THE OKW SHOWED DISTINCT jitters at this time. Normally by September the “escaping season” was considered by them to be over. Instead it now appeared to be hotting up. General von Schulenburg was sent to tighten up discipline amongst the German garrison and impose stricter discipline on the POWs. “Otherwise,” as he said, “different methods would have to be adopted.” His influence had no appreciable effect. During October and November escapes continued at irregular intervals. Even Hitler’s order that all commandos and parachutists were to be regarded as outlaws and to be shot when taken prisoner (which became public knowledge by the end of October) did little to deter initiative or dampen enthusiasm. Eggers reports that the Kommandant received Hitler’s above orders from the OKW in writing on about 14 October.

  Actually, on the evening of 7 October—unbeknown to the prisoners in Colditz—seven commando prisoners from the expedition code-named “Musketoon” arrived in Colditz. The Kommandant, taken by surprise and knowing nothing about them, telephoned the OKW for instructions. The commandos were locked up for the night in the guardroom, away from the other prisoners. The next morning they were being photographed in the Kommandantur courtyard when Peter Tunstall and Scorgie Price, who had entered the Saalhaus overlooking them, called out to them and discovered they were commandos captured in Norway and were en route to another camp. Later Rupert Barry obtained their names through an orderly who took food to them, and the information was passed on in a coded message to MI9 in London.

  Two of them, including their leader, the Canadian Captain Graeme Black MC, were taken to cells in the town jail. There Peter Storie-Pugh and Dick Howe managed further conversation with them, and Dominic Bruce did so the following day. The next afternoon Eggers escorted four Gestapo men to the jail and the two commandos were removed.

  The seven commandos left Colditz on 13 October. Hitler’s order that captured commandos should be shot was not issued in Germany until 18 October, nor in Norway (where the commandos had blown up a hydro-electric power station) until 26 October. Yet at dawn on 23 October all seven were killed by the SS, shot in the back of the neck at camp Sachsenhausen. The German government then told the Swiss that the men had escaped, and Colditz Oflag IVC was instructed to return any letters to their senders marked “Geflohen,” “escaped.” Six were so returned.

  It was a grim episode in the Castle’s history. At the Nuremberg trials after the war, where the crime formed part of the indictment against General Jodl, it was seen that the date on the German document recording the executions had been altered from 27 to 30 October in an attempt to disguise their retrospective nature.

  This is an appropriate moment to enlarge upon the code system developed at Colditz.

  Rupert Barry became OC (Officer Commanding) Codes in Colditz at a very early date. It is generally thought, but not completely documented, that the War Offi
ce had already by May 1940 instructed a scattering of officers in the British Expeditionary Force on a code system for communication by letter in the event of their being taken prisoner. For instance, from Oflag VIIC at Laufen a message dated 4 March 1941 was received by the War Office on 22 March. However, the first British inmates at Colditz had no such code. Rupert and I set to make our own. I had actually invented a primitive code with my friend Biddy O’Kelly in Ireland. I wrote some letters in this code, but she could make nothing of them. Rupert had much more success. His wife Dodo was a highly intelligent girl who could do the Times crossword puzzle while she had her morning cup of tea. The first message he sent was: “Go to the War Office, ask them to send forged Swedish diplomatic papers in shovehalfpenny boards for Reid, Howe, Allan, Lockwood, Elliott, Wardle, Milne and self.” His wife’s immediate reaction on receipt of this letter was that he had gone mad, but before long she had decoded it. Rupert says:

  At nine o’clock next morning she presented herself at the War Office main door and asked the commissionaire if she could see an officer in the Military Intelligence Department. She was presented with a form to fill in in which she was asked, among other things, for details of the subject she wished to discuss. This she refused to state, saying that the matter was secret. A violent argument ensued and as it became clear that she was not going to be allowed in, she explained her difficulty to an officer in uniform who came by, and told him that she had come to discuss a secret matter with an officer in Military Intelligence and not with the commissionaire, and could he help her. It so happened that he could, he would, and in fact did help her. My wife was instructed to write back to me in clear saying that she had met an old aunt of mine called Christine Silverman who had not seen me since I was a child and was distressed to hear where I was and that she would write to me. I, of course, had no aunt of that name and, as things turned out, I in fact received “Christine’s” letter before my wife told me of her chance but happy meeting. However, it only took me a few seconds to rumble what had happened. We set about the letter with great expectations only to have our hopes destroyed by the message, “The War Office considered the use of Swedish Diplomatic papers to be too dangerous.” Our reply to this was, “We will consider the danger and not the War Office. Would you please expedite.” Suffice to say that after this somewhat unnecessary delay and because shovehalfpenny boards were no longer acceptable to the Germans as they had already found naughty things hidden in them, we never received our Swedish papers! However, communications had been established and these grew and grew.