Colditz Page 9

  Pierre and his whole contingent were transported to a temporary POW camp at Lunéville where they were held for a few days. Pierre admits, as do so many others who found themselves in a similar situation, that this was the time he should have chosen to escape. He was still in France. Escape was comparatively easy. He was held back by rumors of a cessation of hostilities and early liberation. He felt he had a duty to stand by his junior officers and his troops in the same predicament.

  At Lunéville the separation of regular Army officers from the rest took place. Instead of being liberated and sent home (there had been rumors of a ceasefire) he was transported into Germany and ended up at Warburg prison, arriving on 5 August 1940, a few weeks after his capture. The camp consisted of a few huts on a treeless plain near the small village of Dössel, and was surrounded by the regulation double barbed-wire fences. Watch towers every 200 yards were manned by armed guards, with foot patrols between each of these points. Only an ancient feudal castle relieved the dreariness of the landscape.

  On 11 October he and a colleague escaped, having cut through thirty-five strands of wire. Hiding up in a wood three days later, they were surprised by German soldiers on exercise; Lebrun got away but his colleague, still recovering from wounds, was recaptured. After many adventures Lebrun came to the frontier at the Swiss enclave on the German side of the Rhine, opposite Basle. Knowing that he must be patient until nightfall, he decided to hide in a wood 300 yards away. As he crossed a field towards it a boy who was looking after some cows called out “Bonsoir, monsieur.” Lebrun paid no attention. But he had already been careless. He had been seen surveying the sentries from the top of a hill. Less than an hour after reaching the wood, a patrol on the look-out for him caught sight of him, and fired as he tried to sprint for the frontier. He was recaptured and handed over to the Gestapo. A Gestapo officer who spoke fluent French interrogated him. Lebrun had nothing to tell him except about meeting the boy whose “Bonsoir” had puzzled him. At that the interrogator exclaimed “Mon pauvre vieux, you were in Switzerland!”

  Soon he was returned to Warburg. His friends had gone. The French had been moved and replaced by Poles. None of his possessions remained. After five days in cells Lebrun was sent to Münster, Oflag VID, where he was given a noisy welcome. At that time, out of 3,000 prisoners in the camp, he was the only escaper. Everyone asked for information. Escaping was the constant topic of conversation, but although many had all sorts of plans, very few risked putting them to the test. Lebrun decided to have another go. The Dutch frontier was only forty miles away. He passed through the main gate easily with a group of workmen from whom he had previously stolen, item by item, the necessary clothing. But he got no further.

  On 3 December 1940, without any explanation, Lebrun was removed from Oflag VID and transferred to Colditz.

  Sixty-eight Dutch officers arrived in Colditz on 24 July. The population of the camp was now approaching 500 officers and other ranks. There were 140 Poles, fifty British and about 250 French.

  At this time, Eggers, as has been mentioned in the previous chapter, had security responsibility for the Schützenhaus, the lower prison in Colditz town. It was not heavily guarded like the Castle and it housed a number of French officers and men of White Russian origin who had been syphoned off, like the Jews, from other camps.

  The White Russians were mostly members of the Russian Orthodox faith and were allowed the special concession of receiving the Orthodox bishop of Dresden and his choir for services at a few important religious festivals during the year. The 17/18 July was one such occasion. When the bishop and his mixed choir of men and women departed, the French White Russian Lieutenant Tatischeff was missing at the evening roll-call. It transpired that a lady of the choir, Miss Hoffman, had succumbed to his amorous advances and had helped him to escape. He successfully reached France. She was apprehended and imprisoned.

  The escaping season was now in full flood; hardly a day passed without an incident. On 26 July, Lieutenant Lados and Captain Harry Elliott made an unsuccessful attempt to hide on the way back from the park. On 28 July, the French Lieutenants Perrin and Thibaud, having cut bars in the window of an air shaft in the Saalhaus, descended three stories by rope and posing as German workmen with regulation yellow armbands walked out of the Castle through the gate to the park. Having let them pass, the duty sentry at the last gate had second thoughts. Although he had no pass checklist at this post and the display of brass discs was not required there, he reported the matter, and soldiers on bicycles caught up with the escapers on the way to Leisnig railway station.

  On 31 July, the British at night broke through a wall into a lavatory closet on the German side. Eight of a party of twelve, dressed as civilians, passed through the hole. They had to find their own way out of the Kommandantur and then out of the Castle grounds. After forty minutes, the men climbing through at five-minute intervals, our stooges at the window had still not spotted any of them exiting from the Kommandantur. I advised the remaining four to stay put. It was just as well. The Germans knew all about our hole, and the eight had been allowed to creep down a long corridor outside the Abort (lavatory) before being quietly apprehended.

  Such a failure was demoralizing in itself (not that I had ever had much confidence in the venture), and no doubt the Germans had deliberately played the whole thing out to demoralize us as much as possible. To make matters worse, each of the eight had been caught in his full escaping kit—a waste of months of effort by the prisoners and a valuable prize for the Germans.

  At this period of captivity, escape equipment had become organized. Although every officer had not yet been equipped with identity papers, each had a home-made compass of one kind or another, a set of maps painfully traced over and over again from originals, and each was given some German money. Every officer possessed his private escape kit, which he had ample time to devise during the long hours of enforced idleness. It was surprising what could be produced in the way of civilian clothing by dyeing and altering, by cutting up blankets, and by imaginative sewing and knitting. Officers had their specialties and turned out articles in quantity.

  I, for instance, concentrated on the manufacture of “gor blimey” caps and rucksacks. My particular brand of cap, cut out of any suitably colored blanket, having a peak stiffened with a piece of leather or other water-resisting stiffener and lined with a portion of colored handkerchief and a soft-leather head-band, looked quite professional. My rucksacks were not always waterproof; they were made from dark-colored or dyed, tough Army material, with broad trouser-braces adapted as straps, and the flaps and corners neatly edged with leather strips cut from boot tongues. They would pass in Germany as workmen’s rucksacks.

  Dyeing with “ersatz” coffee or purple pencil-lead became a fine art. The blue Royal Air Force uniform was readily adaptable and with skilful tailoring could become a passable civilian suit. Of course, real civilian clothing was what every officer ultimately aimed at possessing. I described in The Colditz Story one of the ways we tried to obtain it.

  During one of the very rare visits of a German civilian dentist to supplement the work of the French Army dentist, he was accompanied by two leech-like sentries, who kept so close to him that he hardly had room to wield his forceps. The dentist’s torture chamber (I had blunted all the drills trying to make keys) was approached through a number of small rooms and had two doors, one of which was supposed to be permanently locked but which was opened on nefarious occasions with the aid of a universal key. On the back of this door was a coat-hook, and on the hook the German dentist hung his Homburg hat and a fine fur-collared tweed overcoat.

  This was “big game.” Dick Howe, with another British officer, “Scorgie” Price, and a French officer named Jacques Prot were soon hot on the trail.

  Dick arranged to pay an officer’s dentist’s bill. The dentist was paid in Lagergeld [camp money] and Dick sought out an officer with a heavy bill—it came to a hundred marks. He collected the whole sum in one-mark notes. This would
give him plenty of time. He arranged a signal with the other two. The operative word was “Right.” When Dick said “Right” loudly, Price was to open the locked door and remove the coat and hat.

  Dick went to the dentist’s room and insisted on interrupting the dentist’s work to pay his brother-officer’s bill. He drew him over to a table; the two sentries dutifully followed; and Dick started to count out laboriously his Lagergeld.

  “Eins, zwei, drei …” he started and carried on to zehn, at which point he looked up to see if he had the full attention of the dentist and the guards. “Not quite,” he thought, and he carried on painfully, “elf, zwölf….” By the time he reached zwanzig he had all their eyes riveted on the slowly rising pile of notes, so he said “Right.” As he continued he sensed nothing had happened. At dreissig he repeated “Right” a little louder. Again nothing happened. At vierzig he filled his lungs and shouted “Right” again. Still nothing happened. Doggedly he continued, holding the attention of all three, as his reserves of Lagergeld dwindled. As fünfzig, sechzig, siebzig passed his “Rights” crescendoed, to the amusement of his three spectators. Nothing happened. An operatic bass would have been proud of Dick’s final rendering at achtzig, neunzig, and hundert. The scheme had failed, and the only persons laughing were the Germans at Dick’s, by this time, comic act.

  The dentist, still guffawing, collected all the notes together and before Dick’s crestfallen gaze, started recounting them. As he reached zehn he shouted “R-r-reight,” and Dick, to his own utter astonishment, felt, rather than heard, the door open behind them, and sensed an arm appearing around it. Before the dentist had reached zwanzig the door had closed again. Dick continued the pantomime and eventually, after assuring himself that the coat and hat had really disappeared, he retired from the scene with apologies—a shaken man.

  The concealment of such contraband was a perennial problem. The common hiding-places and those at various times (often found out by the Germans) were: behind false-backed cupboards, in trap-door hides, under floorboards and sewn into mattresses and overcoat-linings. Small items were often sealed in cigarette tins, weighted and dropped into lavatory cisterns or concealed in stores of food. There were myriad possibilities.

  The escape attempts continued. On 2 August, Lieutenant Lados, in the cells from his previous attempt, escaped by a rope made from torn strips of blanket. He had filed through a bar on his window. He reached the Swiss border but was recaught, utterly exhausted. Then on 4 August, two British, Don Thom and “Bertie” Boustead, attired as young German Hitler Youths in sports gear, attempted a get-away in the park. Their Hitler salutes were so bad that they were stopped and hauled over the coals by a German sergeant. Unable to reply effectively to his questions in German, their game was up. Eggers states that their disguise, shorts and vests with a swastika on the chest, were first class.

  6

  Sixty-Eight Dutchmen

  Summer 1941

  ON 16 AUGUST, A SATURDAY, a major upheaval took place. Two Dutch officers had been missing from Appells the day before. The Dutch did nothing by halves! Five of their officers were now missing at a Sonderappell (special roll-call) soon after the park walk. The Germans could not believe their eyes or their arithmetic. It is time to explain the presence of these Dutchmen.

  They were nearly all Netherlands East Indies Army officers. At the outbreak of war, they had sailed home with their troops to Holland in order to help the mother country. When Holland was occupied, the German High Command offered an amnesty to all those Dutch officers who would sign a certain document.

  The capitulation of Holland had taken place on 15 May 1940. The Queen of the Netherlands, together with the other members of the Royal family and the ministries of the Government, had already landed in England. Meanwhile the Dutch armed forces were regarded as prisoners of war by the German High Command. By the end of May, General Christiansen, commanding the German forces, received a letter from Hitler indicating the terms upon which the Dutch armed forces were to be released. For conscripts there was no problem; they were released unconditionally. For the regular forces it was another matter. A document, or “Declaration” as it was called, was to be signed by all career officers of the regular armed forces of Holland. It read:

  I hereby declare on my word of honor that during this war, or as long as the Netherlands is in a state of war with the German Reich, I shall not take part in any way, either directly or indirectly, in the fight against Germany. I shall not take any form of action, either positive or negative, which would endanger the Reich in any possible way.

  The reason why a small group of sixty-eight officers—later called the Colditz group—did not sign was, briefly, that to sign the Declaration was in conflict with the oath of allegiance to the Queen, taken by all officers. This made it impossible to sign a conflicting declaration on their honor to the Germans. After all, the Queen and her ministers had gone to England to continue the fight against the Germans and the Dutch colonies (not yet occupied) were still part of the Queen’s realm.

  On 14 July 1940, 2,000 officers and 12,400 other ranks signed the declaration at various centers in the country and were later sent home. Seventy-three officers, including three generals, three Dutch Home Army officers and twelve officer cadets, refused to sign and were sent to a POW camp, Juliusberg at Soest in Westphalia. Later the generals were sent to another camp to join General Winkelman (the Dutch commander-in-chief) and two other generals. The Queen was reportedly most upset when she heard that practically the entire Dutch officer corps had signed the declaration (though many later joined the Resistance).

  The three Dutch officers of the Home Army who refused their signatures were Captains H. J. van der Hoog and N. Hogerland, and Lieutenant J. J. L. Baron van Lynden. They arrived in Colditz included in the “sixty-eight.” Van der Hoog, of noble bearing, stood tall and erect and walked the yard alone with a military step. A long black cloak gathered over his shoulders like a toga earned him the title of Julius Caesar. Baron van Lynden, also tall but rather bowed, had been an aide-de-camp to Queen Wilhelmina and had become in the war an adjutant of General Winkelman. Two other naval adjutants were Captain H. W. Romswinckel and Lieutenant D. J. van Doorninck.

  Three others were Lieutenant-Colonel T. Rooseboom, chief of Dutch home intelligence, whose orders for the detention before the war of certain Dutch Nazis were afterwards betrayed by the Dutch Nazi Party to the Germans; Captain J. D. Schepers, a military lawyer who had remained free until the Germans discovered that he had been responsible for shipping to England 800 German prisoners of war: parachutists, aviation personnel and advance shock troops, just a few hours before the advancing German Army could rescue them; and the third, Lieutenant J. S. M. Eras, a reservist, detained for the same reason.

  After many vicissitudes, including unending wordy battles with the Germans and numerous escape attempts, the “sixty-eight” finally ended up lock, stock and barrel in Colditz. (Two Netherlands East Indies Army officers, Captain H. Trebels and Lieutenant F. van der Veen, had escaped successfully earlier and were not in the sixty-eight.) Since they all spoke German fluently, were as obstinate as mules and as brave as lions, heartily despised the Germans and showed it, they presented special difficulties as prisoners!

  Their Senior Officer was Major Engles. They were always impeccably turned out on parade and maintained a high standard of discipline among themselves. From the beginning, close relations were maintained between the British and Dutch and, though at the start this did not involve revealing the full details of respective plans, it soon developed into a close co-operation, which was headed on the Dutch side by their escape officer, Captain van den Heuvel.

  The Dutch were not very long at Colditz before van den Heuvel warned me of an impending attempt. “Vandy,” as he was inevitably called, was a tall, big-chested man with a round face, florid complexion and an almost permanent broad grin. His mouth was large enough in repose, but when he smiled it was from ear to ear. He had hidden depths of pride and a t
errific temper, revealed on rare occasions. He spoke English well, but with a droll Dutch accent.

  The Germans could never tell if anything was going on among the Dutch. Their behavior was always the same—perfect discipline, quiet in their manner, naturally and easily dropping into and out of a conversation whenever they wished. They did not make themselves conspicuous. Hence their success in springing surprises. Only then would they approach the bounds of familiarity, with the broadest of grins among themselves, occasionally shared with the British. They rejoiced in the park exercise ground as a field for escape maneuvers, and profited by it more than anyone else. Within weeks of their arrival at Colditz, they achieved some break-outs.

  Van den Heuvel, as escape officer, had decided to give up all attempts himself, merely organizing and assisting in escapes for others. He was indispensable and many successful escapes were attributable to his tireless efforts.

  While taking a stroll in the park one day he had noticed a concrete manhole top, flush with the ground and closed off by a wooden lid, three feet square. The lid had hinges on one side and a few small air holes. Having summoned a few others, who seated themselves around the lid and kept up an animated conversation, he lifted the top a few inches. It was a well—fairly deep, too.

  The next time the Dutch went for a walk they sat right on top of the well while Vandy carefully lowered a stone on a string through one of the holes. The cavity proved to be about ten feet deep with five feet of water. So many POWs had looked at this well cover, walked across it and probably sat on it. Nobody had realized the tremendous possibilities it offered.