Colditz Read online

  A few days later he noted his impressions of life in the Castle:

  Saturday 11 January

  If this is a Strafe [punishment] camp—as it is—my chief regret is that I was not strafed from the first date of capture. During my period of detention in Germany I have had nothing that is better and much that is worse than Oflag IVC.

  The ways in which IVC is superior to any of the other camps in which I have been detained are, in order of importance:

  (a) The British community itself! We are few in number, but apart from the chaplains who are three quite ordinary fellows, the fighting officers are of the best British type. They would not have been in this camp [were they not] of bolder spirit and larger initiative than their fellows in other camps. An escaper is always in danger of being shot like a rabbit, and I think the German authorities—who would be proud enough of any of their officers who had made an escape—honor these fellows for their daring and their refusal to be nice comfortable prisoners who give no trouble.

  In all other officers’ camps that I know, certain elite sets have segregated themselves and have lived in indigent, but pompous, isolation…. There is no hint of that in this camp. We are seventeen officers in number. No two are alike except in good comradeship. Some of England’s number one group of public schools are represented; while some of the RAF officers would make no wider claim than an intense willingness to serve their country. My present judgement is that there are none who regard themselves as being of different clay from the rest. Regulars, Territorials, Emergency Reserve, etc., take each other for what they are worth; and it seems to me that their worth as men and soldiers is pretty high.

  (b) We have been mercifully preserved from the presence of that arch-tormentor of prisoners of war, the organizing genius….

  (c) The Poles and the French are excellent fellows. They are all of the difficult-prisoner type. But difficult prisoners make interesting prison companions. There is always something going on—planning escapes, or putting plans in process of execution; swapping war stories. So, though monotony is almost inescapable in these conditions, it is by no means as prevalent as in non-difficult-prisoner camps.

  (d) The final reason, and a very cogent one, is the attitude of the Lager authorities. By and large, they are the best type of German officers I have met since the 10th CCS [Casualty Clearing Station] was overhauled by their front-line troops. To maintain discipline, they do not resort to a weak man’s refuge—petty tyranny—but treat us, after they have taken every precaution to prevent escapes, as gentlemen who know the meaning of honor and possess a gentleman’s dignity.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Schmidt, the Kommandant, and Major Menz, the second-in-command (who went to school in Eastbourne in his boyhood), strike me as being desirous of doing nothing that even an enemy prisoner could regard as unfair. When either of them comes into the Hof [courtyard] or our quarters, and one of the accompanying German officers gives the command “Achtung,” they scarcely wait for us to make the initial effort to rise before waving us back to whatever pursuits we were following. Needless to say, we are more meticulous in their presence about military etiquette than would otherwise be the case.

  Apart from the Red Cross parcels, there was little respite from the dreary food provided for us by the Germans. Padre Platt’s diary reveals one ruse for relieving the monotony:

  Monday 27 January

  Dick Howe is receiving extensive Californian sympathy mail these days. He wrote to Ginger Rogers’ Hollywood address in July, at a time when letters could not be sent to England. Miss Rogers herself has not replied, but her publicity agent made front page news of the letter in the Los Angeles Observer.

  A largish number of aspirant stars saw the notice, and at once wrote to Dick furnishing details about their height, weight, figure, color of eyes and hair (monotonously blue and blonde) and stating their fixed preference for this, that, and the other. “Please don’t think me fast or husband-seeking because of this letter. I am a career woman (age 17) and have told Mum and Dad a score of times that I shall never, never marry”—and so they all end! In nine letters out of ten a pretty photograph of the “career woman” is enclosed, showing her in a devastatingly attractive bathing costume, or in trousers and silk shirt. We hope for lots more. Their entertainment value is high indeed.

  However, from a practical point of view the whole thing is a wet squib! The original letter was one of many written by officers to people they thought might be good for a monthly food and tobacco parcel. Of course the ulterior motive was not openly avowed in the letter but there were some who received letters who thought at once of a parcel. Dick drew a blank. Letters, yes, parcels nary-a-one! Still, the letters are of unspeakable value; they give our forcing-house of humor a much appreciated zest.

  At the end of February 1941, 200 French officers arrived under the leadership of General Le Bleu, who hated all things Boche. One of them, General Le Brigant, in his book Les Indomptables describes their arrival (my translation):

  Carrying their personal possessions, surrounded by armed guards with bayonets fixed, the future guests of the Schloss cross the town and the stone bridge over the Mulde river, painfully climb the steep narrow alleyways, and arrive at last at a postern gate situated between two deep moats. The papers handed over by the accompanying guards are carefully examined. A telephone call is made to obtain permission to open the main entrance doors…. A German officer approaches, a cloak over his shoulders. He welcomes the new recruits with an artificially friendly smile. He says “Welcome to the Escaping Academy! But from here there is no escaping!”

  A face appears behind the bars of a high-up window. A voice calls out “Are you prisoners? So am I. But what’s the time? We no longer know anything in this place!” Threatened by a guard, the face vanishes. A Feldwebel turns an enormous key in the massive oak, iron-bound door which gives access to the interior of the Schloss….

  The newcomers are ready to sleep after their heavy day, but an urgent voice from the other side of the door tells them to look out at midnight. Sharp on midnight (when the change of guard was taking place) strings appear outside the window to which, item by item, they tie their contraband. Compasses, German money, maps, and a few items of civilian clothing. They are pulled up to the next floor. The new arrivals begin to feel a little less despairing.

  Not all the new French officers were escapers by any means, but about a hundred of them were. Among the remainder were a number of French Jewish officers who were separated from the rest by the Germans and given their own quarters on the top floor of the Castle.

  The Kommandant of Colditz carried sole responsibility for the inmates of Colditz. Oberstleutnant Schmidt had been carefully selected by the OKW because of the peculiar nature of the post: the safe-keeping of rebellious, intransigent, Deutschfeindlich prisoners. (Deutschfeindlich—meaning “enemy of Germany”—was an annotation appended along with a red seal to the records of a majority of the prisoners in Colditz.) He was empowered to use whatever means he considered necessary to ensure control over the prisoners.

  Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, the detaining power is permitted to create “special” camps for the control of “escapers” and “offenders” provided the principles of the Convention are not contravened. In practice, this involved more roll-calls, more searches, more sentries, less exercise space, less privacy, less privileges, no parole.

  Schmidt was an officer of the old school. Despite his rigid outlook and approach to his job, he retained the concept of chivalry in which he had been brought up. He tolerated no slackness in his staff and dealt severely with offenders. He ensured that so much was verboten in the prison regulations that he found little difficulty in discovering misdemeanors when he wished to. He accepted the right of officer POWs to attempt to escape and he did his best to comply with the rules of the Geneva Convention. But orders from Berlin often overruled its terms, and it was these OKW orders which he had to obey.

  While with one hand he was capable of
ordering the confiscation of all Penguin books (the objection was to certain advertisements in the notice pages), he tried to help the small British contingent, which from November onwards found itself without any “reading” in the English language. Guy German made a spirited approach and the Kommandant reacted by involving the German Red Cross in an endeavor to find some reading material in English within the fastnesses of the German Reich. His appeal found its response and a large boxful of heterogeneous English literature found its way to the British quarters, after careful scrutiny and censorship by the Kommandant’s staff employed for that purpose.

  Amongst the diverse literature that turned up, from English translations of Goethe and Nietzsche to speeches by Hitler, an inconspicuous little book received the Colditz censor’s “Geprüft” stamp. It was Stratosphere and Rocket Flight (Astronautics) by Charles G. Philp, published in 1935. The book attracted me at once (as well as being a civil engineer, I was also a visionary). Philp’s book should never have passed the German censor. Chapter 13 was headed “Man achieves his First Rocket Flight.” It gave graphic details of an ascent by a man in a rocket early in November 1933 up to six miles high, and his safe descent by parachute. The experiment took place on the Island of Rugen. Chapter 14 was headed “The Rocket in Warfare.” The OKW bought up all the patents and the accompanying technical know-how on the spot. At this point the story must be left in abeyance because nothing further happened until 1943.

  Guy German placed me in charge of escape operations. He relied upon me to tell him only the barest essentials; in this way he could keep aloof from these operations and so be in a stronger position vis-à-vis the Germans. Guy nevertheless was keen to participate in any escape attempt into which he could be fitted.

  I began reconnoitering the possibilities of escape from the Castle:

  As at Laufen we concentrated on parts of the Castle not used by ourselves … we were learning from the Poles their art of lockpicking…. I was next attracted by the drains…. Inside the canteen [so called, though it was nothing more than a shop; in German it was labeled Kantine], where we bought our razor-blades and suchlike, in front of the counter on the buyers’ side was a manhole cover. I had not far to seek for assistance in opening up this manhole, for Kenneth [Lockwood] had already provided the solution. Some weeks before he had had himself appointed assistant manager and accountant of the canteen!

  Kenneth was a London Stock Exchange man and the idea of keeping even the meager canteen accounts evidently made him feel a little nearer home. He had been educated at Whitgift School and was by nature a tidy person, meticulous in his ways and in his speech…. [He relentlessly inflicted demoralizing propaganda on the German Feldwebel in charge.] Within a few months he had broken down the morale of the Feldwebel to such an extent that the latter was preaching sedition to his colleagues and had to be removed.

  The table which Kenneth and the Feldwebel used for writing was situated under the only window in the room, at some distance from the counter. While a few people stood at the counter, and Kenneth distracted the German’s attention with some accounting matter at the table, it was comparatively simple to tackle the manhole cover…. [It] came away after some persuasion.

  Sure enough, there were tunnels leading in two directions, one connecting with the tunnel already noticed from the yard, and the other leading out under the window beside which Kenneth and the German worked. A second reconnaissance in more detail showed this latter to be about eighteen yards long and built on a curve. Under the window it was blocked up with large hewn stones and mortar. Outside the shop window and at the level of the canteen floor was a grass lawn, which also abutted the German section of the Castle. At the outer edge of this lawn was a stone balustrade, and then a thirty foot drop over a retaining wall to the level of the roadway which led down to the valley in which our football ground was situated. Maybe the tunnel led out to this wall. We had to find out.

  Padre Platt made a diary entry at this time as follows:

  It will be necessary to cut through the foundations when they are reached; and in the meantime to dispose of the rubble, etc. The line they are following passes right under the canteen, and will eventually come out beneath the eastern ramparts. It will occupy about three months, working two or three hours a night after lights out. Having to work in darkness increases the difficulties, and the necessity for silence, lest a night sentry should become suspicious, adds to the other complications. At present there are two watchers who use a system of signals to indicate when the sentry on his beat is near enough to hear unusual sounds.

  In her edition of Padre Platt’s diary, Margaret Duggan took up the point that this diary entry was surprising in the light of its contents which when subjected to censorship could have compromised the escape attempt. (Platt had told Eggers that he kept a diary and Eggers’ initial response had been that it must be confiscated and would be destroyed. Platt, however, managed to reach an understanding with Eggers that, provided that he handed his diary over for censorship, it would be returned to him after scrutiny and this arrangement was adhered to on both sides.) I too have examined this censor’s “Geprüft” stamp and think that it may well be forged. However, unless this page was inserted at a much later date, there was a grave risk that the censor might, without notice, demand to reread it with earlier pages. Furthermore I have examined the stamps on other pages carrying “classified” information, and I regret to say that these stamps appear to be quite genuine.

  To return to The Colditz Story:

  A few days later we had made out of an iron bedpiece a key which opened the canteen door. Working at night as before we would open our staircase entrance door and cross about ten yards of the courtyard to the canteen door. This opened, we would enter and lock it behind us. We then had to climb a high wooden partition in order to enter the canteen proper, as the door in this partition had a German-type Yale lock which foiled us. The partition separated the canteen from the camp office; a room in which all the haggling took place between our Commanding Officer and the German Camp Kommandant on his periodic visits. The partition was surmounted with the aid of a couple of sheets used as ropes….

  My … idea was to make a vertical shaft which would bring the tunnel up to the grass. I would construct a trap-door which would be covered with grass and yet would open when required, thus repeating my Laufen idea of having the escape tunnel intact for further use. Escapes involved such an immense amount of labor, sometimes only to serve in the escape of one or two men, that it was always worthwhile attempting to leave the escape exit ready for further use. In this case the intention was that the whole British contingent would escape!

  Once out on the grass patch we could creep along under the Castle walls in the dark; descend the retaining wall with sheets; then continue past the guards’ sleeping-quarters to the last defense—the twelve-foot wall of the Castle park surmounted for much of its length with barbed wire. This obstacle would not be difficult provided there was complete concealment, which was possible at night and provided there was plenty of time to deal with the barbed wire. We had to pass in full view of a sentry at one point. He was only forty yards away, but as there were Germans who frequently passed the same point, this was not a serious difficulty.

  I constructed out of bed-boards and stolen screws a trap which looked like a small table with collapsible legs—collapsible so as to enter the tunnel….

  Before all this happened, our plans were temporarily upset. Two Polish officers [the two Air Force officers Lieutenants Gassowski and Gorecki] got into the canteen one night when we were not working and tried to cut the bars outside the window…. Cutting bars cannot be done silently. They did not take the precaution of having their own stooges [look-outs] either to distract the attention of the nearby sentry or to give warning of his approach. Throughout our work on the tunnel we had a signalling system from our rooms above which gave warning of this sentry’s approach. He was normally out of sight from where our tunnel exit was to be, but he only had t
o extend his beat a few yards in order to come into view.

  The Poles were caught red-handed and within a few days a huge floodlight was installed in such a position as to light up the whole lawn and all the prison windows opening on to it.

  This was a good example of what was bound to happen in a camp holding officers bent on escape. We had already asked the Poles for liaison on escape projects so that we would not tread on each other’s toes all the time, and now Colonel German called a meeting with their Senior Officers, at which an agreement was reached. The Senior Polish Officer was in a difficult position because he frankly could not control his officers; he knew that they might attempt to escape without telling him or anybody else. However, after this meeting the liaison improved, and when we offered some Poles places in our tunnel escape, mutual confidence was established….

  We had to come to an arrangement with the French Senior Officer over escape projects similar to that agreed with the Poles, but unfortunately the French liaison system was also found wanting—at the expense of our tunnel—before a workable understanding was reached.

  Before the arrival of General Le Brigant, the French Senior Officer was Colonel de Warren. He had refused to allow a pro-Pétain poster to be hung in his camp office entitled “Français, n’oubliez pas Oran”—anti-British propaganda. De Warren had said, “Messieurs, our officers form their own opinions of their own accord.” He was packed off to Colditz the next day.

  Le Brigant arrived with his German-speaking interpreter Lieutenant André Jung from Gros Born, Westphalenhof (Oflag IID). He had been the Senior French Officer there. Being a no-nonsense Breton and pugnacious at that, he had made an enemy of the German officer in command of his prison block by his alleged “subversive reflections.” André Jung, from Lorraine, was also deemed “criminal” because he had refused to append his signature to a document of allegiance to Germany as a citizen of Lorraine.