Churchill's White Rabbit (28 page)

More upsetting was Forest’s recognition of Captain Desmond Hubble, an old friend from RF Section. Hubble had a family and Forest had always felt the risks he took were too great for someone with such responsibilities. He had tried to persuade him not to take on an operational mission, but like so many SOE men Hubble could not refuse the chance of getting into the action. He had been parachuted into the Ardennes and not long after was discovered and arrested by the Germans.

Among others in the group was unfortunate Christopher Burney who had been sent by SOE to join the Autogiro circuit after it had already been taken over by the Germans. He narrowly escaped walking directly into a trap and was on the run for months before the Gestapo caught up with him. Then there was Lieutenant Stephanie Hessel and 23-year-old Jewish SOE agent Maurice Pertschuk.

All told there were thirty-seven SOE men who were determined to stick together whatever the cost while in the camp. The SS were not concerned about all these agents mingling, perhaps they hoped they would share information that could then be extracted, but they did make every effort to ostracise the group from the other prisoners, even ordering them not to take part in the daily roll call. No doubt this was in an effort to generate resentment among their fellow prisoners and it certainly worked with the communists, who instantly took a dislike to the SOE men. They called the officers products of the ruling classes and whispered that they, like the capitalists, were to be disposed of first once the Soviets took control. Forest was used to this nonsense having worked alongside the communist resistance branch for so long and took no more notice than was required to avoid playing into their hands.

Anyway, he was already busy thinking about escape. While daily life was one of camp routine, interspersed with chess tournaments using a travel set that Hubble had smuggled in, and playing bridge using cards created by Captain Frank Pickersgill of F Section, Forest’s mind was diverted by assessing his chances of escape. The new agents were confined to a limited area and separated from other prisoners by barbed wire. Forest had to use the only two men he trusted who had fuller access to the camp – Burney and Pertschuk.

Forest’s main interest was in the block used for housing prisoners for ‘special treatment’ and where it was well known that experiments were being carried out. This was the preserve of the camp doctors, a notorious bunch who could even send a shiver of fear up an SS man’s spine. They were presided over by 32-year-old Dr Erwin Schuler who specialised in typhus experiments, but there was also Dr August Bender, Dr Hans-Dieter Ellenbeck (who conducted blood experiments), Dr Karl Kahr (previously a camp doctor at Dachau), Dr Erich Kather and Dr Heinrich Plaza. They were a sordid crew of hack scientists but, of more interest to Forest, their secretive experiments cast a fearful pall over their domain, which kept the SS guards at bay. Not least because Dr Schuler was working on a dreadfully infectious disease that none of the SS men wanted to get.

Only Dr Schuler and a political prisoner named Arthur Dietzech, who had been in the camp since 1922, had overall access to the special treatment centre and this potentially made it a relatively safe place for fleeing prisoners.

Forest had noted that other opportunities were limited. The barbed-wire fences were too well guarded and too many unfriendly eyes would happily reveal would-be escapees to the SS. But people who entered the special treatment centre were rather prone to ‘vanishing’. It might be the only way to ship out a number of men.

Forest set his mind to not only contacting Dr Schuler, but getting him to help them. Schuler had adopted the name Ding in the camp for no obvious reason. He was a pleasant-looking young man with dark hair and eyes. He had a boyish set to his face and looked decidedly too friendly to be the sort of person to happily inject a patient with typhus. Unlike some of the tougher-looking guards there was something about Ding that suggested he might be open to manipulation. At least, that was what Forest hoped.

But getting to him was a challenge in itself. The best option was to work through Arthur Dietzech, who served as Ding’s assistant and was as heavily implicated in the evil experiments as his master. He had certainly never refused an order, no matter how unpleasant. The communists had had a similar idea, but had failed to arouse Dietzech’s interest, and he had flatly refused to help them. Though this was not encouraging, Forest felt that the changing war situation might be the key to securing Dietzech’s help. Every day there was more news that the Allies had returned, were storming through France and would soon be in Germany. It would only be a matter of time before Buchenwald was liberated and the Nazis were scared. Any German caught inside the camp who could not prove himself a genuine prisoner would be liable to a war crimes tribunal and Ding, with his diabolical experiments, could hardly expect anything other than a long drop on a short rope. His assistant Dietzech was equally in danger.

If Forest couldn’t appeal to their humanity, he would appeal to their sense of self-preservation. It felt like being back in SOE headquarters as Forest tried to negotiate a way to Ding. It began with Burney, who put him in touch with a man called Balachowski. In turn Balachowski put him in touch with two German prisoners: Eugen Kogon and Heinz Baumeister (‘quite first class men’).
⁴
Out of these Kogon proved the most useful as he was secretary to Ding and happy to help. He also had seen large numbers of papers detailing the appalling deeds of the doctor that could be used for blackmail.

During the course of his secretarial duties Kogon worked on inducing paranoia in Ding. It wasn’t hard as daily news arrived that the Americans were drawing near and that Germany was suddenly fighting a defensive war. Many SS men were now trying to think how they could cover their backs and survive what was to come. With gentle prodding it wasn’t long before Ding came up with the idea one day that perhaps if he was to help a couple of prisoners escape it would be his insurance for the day the Allies knocked on the gate.

The news that Ding was slowly cracking could not have come at a better moment. Things within the camp were taking a nasty turn. A further 168 Allied airmen had been martialled into the camp three days after Forest had arrived; they should have been in a POW camp but the SS had manoeuvred around this by accusing them of being ‘terror fliers’ – airborne terrorists – and they were not to be treated as genuine prisoners of war.

Their lives were quickly made unbearable at the camp. Many of the men had to sleep outside and developed pneumonia and pleurisy. When an Allied air raid destroyed the factory attached to the camp, killing 300 prisoners and eighty SS men, the situation only got worse for the POWs.

They were fortunate that Burney was actively working to save them and managed to smuggle a message to a nearby Luftwaffe station about their situation. The Luftwaffe immediately saw to it that the airmen were transplanted into their care, except for eleven men who were too sick to be moved.

It was a lucky break but it worried Forest that if genuine airmen could be treated so badly what would happen to him and his fellow SOE men?

Then in the early afternoon of 9 September the usual roll call began. Forest and his colleagues had been ordered not to attend so it was a surprise when, over the speakers, a supplementary order came that sixteen men from Forest’s little group were to attend. Among the names was that of young Pickersgill and Desmond Hubble.

No one was particularly concerned about the summons; it just seemed like another of the random things the SS thought up. Perhaps they wanted to check for escapees. While Hubble made sure that Forest looked after his chess set during his absence, he was not worried that he wouldn’t be back. Henri Peulevé later commented that he was under the ‘assumption that if the SS had wanted them dead they would have killed them in France.’
⁵

Even so, as Forest stood with a few others to watch the men off he noticed the bleak expression on the face of the prisoner who controlled their block and heard him mumble that ‘it was a bad business’. Forest was alarmed and exchanged glances with Peulevé and the others, but it was quietly agreed that they would not say anything to the others to upset them unnecessarily.

When night came there was no sign of the sixteen and Forest feared the worst. He quietly hid Hubble’s chess set with his belongings, doubting there would ever be any future camp tournaments.

The next morning a Polish prisoner brought news that the sixteen had been badly beaten but were still alive and others reported they had been seen exercising outside, but it didn’t appease Forest’s suspicions. The SS rarely did things without sinister motives and he wasn’t convinced they had removed the men so carefully simply to beat them. They preferred such punishment to be public.

The following day Forest’s fears were confirmed when the Polish prisoner returned to them again, this time looking particularly gloomy. A fellow prisoner had reported seeing the bodies of all sixteen, it appeared they had been executed the previous night. Panic swept through the group, but some tried to remain hopeful, after all it was just a rumour. Forest, however, was inclined to believe the story, it sounded far too similar to others he had heard.

Later, Balachowski appeared with the full story. After going to the roll call the sixteen men had been removed to another building where they were savagely beaten and then hung from meat hooks in the ceiling. This was around 5.30 p.m. and the process of slow strangulation from the hangings had taken at least 5–10 minutes. It was a popular method of execution among the Nazis and some of the conspirators in the plot to assassinate Hitler had died in a similar method. The bodies had been passed on to the crematorium, where the Polish informer had seen them. Balachowski was distraught to have to tell them the news, not least because they now had an idea of their own fates. Or at least some did.

‘So these sixteen were condemned, then perhaps we are not, because if we are, why haven’t they taken us too?’ asked some, but Forest did not share their optimism.

Balachowski was still willing to help and arranged for Forest and Peulevé to hide in one of the camp laboratories for a while so they could write letters undisturbed. Forest was quite convinced that these would be his last messages and expressed as much in his notes. They were the bleakest he had written during his entire confinement:

These are ‘famous last words’ I am afraid, but one has to face death one day or another so I will not moan and get down to brass tacks.

I will not attempt to make a report on my journey, except to say that up to the very moment of my arrest it had been a success and I had got things cracking and woken up a number of slumberers (
sic
). I was quite pleased with things – I took every precaution and neglected nothing – my capture was due to one of those incidents one cannot provide for – I had so much work that I was overwhelmed so I asked PIC to provide me with a sure dependable agent de liaison, and he gave me a young chap called Guy whom I renamed Antonin. He worked for me for a week, and then he got caught; how I do not know, but in any case, he had an appointment with me at 11am on Tuesday 21st March by the metro Passy and brought the gestapo with him. He was obviously unable to withstand bullying and very quickly gave in to questioning. I was caught coming around a corner and had not an earthly chance, being collared and handcuffed before I could say ‘knife’. I was badly beaten up in the car on the way to gestapo HQ, arriving there with a twisted nose and a head about twice its normal size. I was then subjected to 4 days’ continuous grilling, being beaten up and also being put into a bath of icy cold water, legs and arms chained, and held head downwards underwater until almost drowned, then pulled out and asked if I had anything to say. This I underwent six times – but I managed to hold out and gave nothing away. Not a single arrest was made as a sequel to my capture. The only trouble was that the party who was lodging me got arrested and will have to be compensated for losing liberty and home. The name is Mlle Sandoe…

I was interrogated for about 2 months, but dodged everything – I was offered freedom if I would hand over Bingen – some hopes – I nearly lost my left arm as a result of the tortures, as I got blood poisoning through my wrist being cut to the bone by chains and remaining unattended with handcuffs biting into the wound for about 6 days. Apart from that I was kept in solitary confinement for 4 months at Fresnes…

I was pretty weak when I came out, had lost about 2
¹
/
₂
stone in weight. I was sent to Compiegne on July 17th, whilst there recuperated a bit and had arranged an escape together with a chap well-known to … BCRA, whose name is Roberty – and got sent to Weimar on the eve of escaping. Roberty succeeded. Bad luck for me. The journey here [Buchenwald] was an eventful one, it took 8 days.

We had to stop at Saarbrucken for 3 days in a punishment and reprisals camp, and were beaten up on arrival – as usual I seemed to attract particular attention and was well and truly slapped and cuffed. We were confined for 3 days and nights, 37 of us in a hut 9 feet by 7 feet by 7 feet. It was Hell. We then came on to this place Buchenwald – on the way our escorts plundered and stole practically all our affects. Never believe a word about German honesty, they are the biggest thieves, liars, bullies and cowards I have ever met. In addition they delight in torturing people and gloat over it.