Colditz (11 page)

As arranged, a bugle blown from a Castle window signaled the “all clear.” Lebrun descended, wearing a smart gray suit made from special pajamas sent to him in the winter, and climbed out of the park. He walked to the station at Gross Bothen, six miles from Colditz, to catch a train to Leipzig. At the ticket office he offered a 100-mark note. To his horror the clerk pointed out that it was invalid, dating from 1924 in the time of President Ebert. He found himself in the station-master's office, suspected first of being an English spy and then of being an escaper from Colditz. Pursuing the second idea, the station-master left Lebrun alone in his office while he went off to telephone. Lebrun promptly climbed out of the window. Unfortunately he dropped at the feet of a woman who at once shrieked with terror. In moments he was recaptured.

On Wednesday afternoon, 2 July, prisoners in the Castle heard volleys of shots from the direction of the park. Mairesse Lebrun was trying to escape again.

He had got twenty-one days' cells for his park attempt. His disappointment after yet another failure is easy to understand, having for brief moments held all the trump cards in his hands. It was galling to have succeeded in getting out of the fortress and to have failed later for such a banal reason as an out-of-date bank note, a note that had been hidden in a nut-shell inside a jar of jam for many months, after arriving in a next-of-kin food parcel. During his time in cells he had many dismal thoughts and moments of despondency, but refused to allow himself to become dismayed by his bad luck. He swore that he would not be a prisoner for more than a year, so there was no time to waste before getting a new escape plan under way. Yet it seemed impossible to expect to get out of that accursed fortress once again. Even in a camp full of experienced escapers he was now very much a marked man.

For prisoners in cells the exercise period each day was from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. An officer, a
Feldwebel
and three armed guards kept the prisoners company in the barbed-wire enclosure in the park. With Lebrun was a comrade, Lieutenant Odry, who was also in cells following an escape attempt. For the first hour, Lebrun exercised and for the remaining hour lay in the sun. Each day he ran at least 800 yards. He knew already, with a fresh plan in his head, that his legs and lungs would need to be in good shape. He had now decided to make his break during an exercise period. He could see no other solution than to leave from under the very noses of the guards, and at the risk of being shot. He was planning to jump the park fence, and he needed to clear it at one go. He discussed the plan with his companion. Odry, though he felt it tantamount to committing suicide, knew that Lebrun's mind was made up. He agreed to help.

The escape clothes were simple. Running shorts, a short-sleeved shirt that he had carefully kept for such an occasion (it was the one he was wearing when first taken prisoner and was something like a Nazi shirt), a leather sleeveless jacket, socks and plimsolls with rubber soles. He had wrapped a razor, soap, a little sugar and chocolate in a silk cravat. A rather tight belt kept the bundle in place inside the jacket.

By 25 June he was ready. His comrades smuggled thirty
Reichsmarks
into his cell; they also sent him nourishing food every day—after all, he needed to be fit. For five exercise periods he was ready to go, but each time the circumstances were not quite right. These false starts put an enormous strain on his nerves—he was too tense before each of them even to eat.

On 2 July the sky was overcast. He told Odry as soon as they arrived in the park that, whatever happened, he was going to have a go that day. They would walk round and round for an hour to reassure the guards. As they walked they chose the exact spot for the leap over the wire, which was eight feet high. They marked the spot with a pebble. At last Lebrun warned Odry that the next circuit of the park would be the last. When they arrived at the pebble, Lebrun placed a foot in Odry's clasped hands; a strong heave and he was over the wire, landing in a dive rather awkwardly on the other side. Then he sprinted in a zig-zag for the wall of the Castle grounds, fifty yards away, as a sentry started shouting. The three sentries fired and the bullets hit the wall in front of him. He knew that he now had to get over while the sentries were reloading. He leaped, pulled himself on to the top of the wall and jumped down on the other side.

He ran for the nearby wood, and as he made his way through it he crossed a river twice, hoping in that way to throw the dogs off his scent. By the time he reached the edge of the wood, a siren was warning of an escaped prisoner, so it was now vital that he should not be seen by a farmworker. He decided to hide in a cornfield, slowly walking in backwards, lifting up the flattened stalks as he went. It was 2:30 p.m. He would have to wait until darkness fell at 10:30 p.m.

For three nights and two days it rained continuously, so being dressed in shorts it was better not to be seen by anyone. He travelled at night, following the River Mulde to the south-west, until on the morning of 5 July the sun started to shine again. As soon as his clothes were dry he walked into the town of Zwickau and stole a bicycle. He was still only fifty miles from Colditz, but now he looked like a German cyclist on tour. Eventually he reached Switzerland and freedom, nearly 400 miles away.

“If I succeed, I would be grateful if you would arrange for my personal possessions to be sent to the following address…. May God help me!” That message was on a label tied to a suitcase Pierre had left in his cell and which contained the few things that he treasured. With them was a piece of sausage, heavily peppered to put off the dogs who would certainly be taken to sniff his parcel and then sent on his heels. The
Kommandant
of the camp complied with the request, and some months later a box arrived for Pierre which contained the few souvenirs of his stay in Colditz. He was deeply grateful for this gesture from those he refers to as “True Soldiers.”

Born in 1912, Lebrun's childhood was dominated by the Great War—for years afterwards it seemed the only topic of conversation. So, although his family had little military tradition, he joined the cavalry. Armored tanks had replaced many
horses at the Saumur Cavalry School, from which he passed out in 1936, but horsemanship was the ruling passion of every young officer. Pierre was the youngest of his class, yet he outshone his brother aspirants in almost every sport he indulged in and he loved many forms: from polo to tennis, from dressage to Alpinism, from horse trials to swimming. He was a natural sportsman and Saumur in those days was made for such men. In fact, Saumur had altered very little from the gilded days before the First World War. From 1935 until the outbreak of the Second War, Pierre's reputation as a polo player and a showjumper grew to international proportions. His life became a continual grand tour of polo tournaments and
concours hippiques
. He was poised to compete in the Olympic horse trials of 1940 with his own personally trained horse. This was an outstanding achievement for a young career Army officer. In fact, Pierre admits that when war was declared he was more concerned at first with the dashing of all his personal hopes and ambitions than with the fears and tragedy of France once more at war.

His independent nature had already led him in peacetime to opt for any individual operation that came his way. As soon as war was declared he volunteered for and organized independent missions which he himself named the “
Corps Francs
.” These were small bodies of troops, self-contained and sent forward into enemy areas as probes with various tasks to perform from pure reconnaissance to active sabotage or silencing of enemy positions. In fact he was originating the “commandos.” He was also making sure for himself that he had an independent role to play, fighting his own war, unhampered by the irksome and ponderous inefficiency of commands emanating from above him. He thus evaded the possible consequences of what might have been branded as indiscipline.

Within weeks of the German attack on France in May 1940, Lebrun had won the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'Honneur. On 14 June—the day the Germans entered Paris—he received orders to hold Châtel sur Moselle to the bitter end, a sacrificial mission to stop the Germans crossing the Moselle. He was in the extraordinary situation now of facing the Germans attacking from the west while he had the Maginot Line behind him to the east. There was little liaison and scant information after a month of fighting. He knew the war was going badly, but little did he know how badly. He thought perhaps the French were fighting another battle like that of the Marne. He did not even know that Paris had already fallen. He knew nothing of Dunkirk. He did not know that an armistice was demanded on 17 June. He had his orders so he fought on. On 22 June he finally decided to surrender. France officially capitulated on that day. His ammunition was finished. He had lost half of his men. The German commander, in fact, in accepting his surrender, accorded him and his survivors full military honors.

Pierre was taken for the night to a church in the village of Maurville not far from Châtel where, the next day, he found himself in dire trouble. One day accorded military honors—the next in a field with the other French officers facing four German machine-guns, about to be shot. The reason: during the night a German sentry had had his throat cut. Moreover his ears had been cut off. This was enough to convince the Germans that an African soldier was responsible (a unit of North African French black troops had fought with Pierre). Pierre and his brother officers were deemed responsible for the correct behavior of their troops and of course for any dereliction thereof. Summary justice and retribution for the murder was demanded.

One of the younger French officers, Lieutenant Mehu, was standing beside Pierre when a German command car drove into the field; out stepped several German officers to supervise the execution. Suddenly, Mehu exclaimed,
“Je connais bien cet officier là!”
Hurriedly he told Lebrun that the officer he had recognized had been his opposite number in Berlin when he was in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some time before the outbreak of war. Mehu broke ranks in front of the machine-guns, approached the German officer and saluted. There was immediate recognition on a friendly note, and the execution was called off.

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.