Colditz (33 page)

“Yes,” said Dick. “It's funny how well they've behaved in Colditz considering the hell we give them!'

“Ach, Dick, that is the secret. You must always give them hell. If you do not, you are finished. I was in camps before I came to Colditz. There I saw vot happened. Germans despised the prisoners and gave them hell. Here it was otherwise. You vere different—and you gave them hell from the virst days. So, they respect you and are afraid to bully. It is a simple qvestion of domination by vorce of the character. Do not vorget! Goodbye, Dick … and … Gott bless England!”

So, the irrepressible Vandy, the officer in charge of all the Dutch escapes, but never of his own, departed.

The escape record throughout the war, 1940–1945, of Vandy's sixty-eight officers and cadets, mostly of the Dutch East Indies Forces, who were sent from Holland in 1940 to Colditz via Soest and Juliusburg, is here set down: thirteen made home-runs, two others reached Russia and died there, and in addition this company can lay claim to twenty-seven “gone-aways,” i.e. escapes.

There is an interesting aside to be made at this point. In June 1943 I was working at the British Legation in Berne as 2nd assistant military attaché. Intelligence reports were filtering through about Hitler's secret weapons. I noticed that the location of this secret work was often given as Peenemunde. I remembered well the little book I had read at Colditz, and in particular that the Island of Rugen was cited in it as a center of German rocketry research. I studied a map of the Baltic and what should I find on the Island of Rugen but the small town and district of Peenemunde. Thus the likelihood was that Hitler's secret weapon was a rocket! I reported this link to my superior, who in turn told the military attaché. Whether he passed it on to London I do not know, but this story has a conclusion which finds its place appropriately in
Appendix 4
.

On 17 June Colonel German arrived back in Colditz from Spangenburg where he had tried to escape. Padre Platt's diary refers to stories from similarly returned officers that Spangenburg IXA was “a deadbeat's camp,” where escape activity was constrained by a host of committees. “The moat,” says Platt, “which in the early days was the domain of 3 wild hogs and was the one hopeful way of escape, is now a flower, salad and vegetable garden.” There was apparently “a vigorous knitting and tatting circle.” Hearing of this Harry Elliott tried to find a volunteer in Colditz for “Knitting and Tatting Officer.”

From 21 June a total of seventy-six British officers and four orderlies arrived in batches from
Oflag
VIIIB at Eichstatt in Bavaria. Of these, sixty-seven
officers and men had taken part early in June in one of the greatest break-outs of the war—the Eichstatt tunnel. This was a beautifully engineered escape, but the officers involved were poorly equipped in respect of civilian clothing and identity papers, and none of them made the home-run. The last nine, including Lieutenant-Colonel W. M. Broomhall, Royal Engineers, had made another escape attempt from the same camp. “Tubby” Broomhall took over as Senior British Officer from Colonel Stayner as he was senior in rank. He had marched out of Eichstatt through two gates, dressed as a German general. His ADC was Lance Pope. The general was allegedly visiting the camp on a survey of its layout. He stopped leisurely to examine plans and discuss alterations with a cortège accompanying him. The Germans at both gates hurried to let the whole party through, overawed by raucous commands and impatient looks. Suddenly one of the sentries realized that the general was still inside the gates and that the one who had marched out must be an imposter. A search was implemented and Tubby was recaptured.

Lieutenant Fahy, the Frenchman who had been wounded on 20 June 1942 by Hauptmann Müller, escaped on 8 July from the hospital at Hohnstein-Erstthal and was caught at Kaufungen. On 12 July the French Lieutenant Elisée-Aiban Darthenay escaped from the same hospital and succeeded in making a home-run. He joined the French Resistance. He was arrested by the Gestapo on Good Friday, 7 April 1944, and imprisoned in the local school at Oyannax. On 11 April, with four others, he was led to a small village, Sièges, in the Jura, seven miles away. The Germans held an identity parade with the villagers. None gave the Resistance men away. The Germans thereupon collected every man in the district, and some of the women and children, and transported them into Germany. The five Resistance men were machine-gunned against the wall of a farm. The whole village was then set on fire.

In fact the French contingent were in the process of leaving Colditz. Among them of course was Fredo Guigues, leader of the French tunnellers and master lock-picker. Algerian-born and nicknamed “Scarface” because of an enormous sword scar on his face, Guigues had already left Colditz, only to return. In the summer, stripped to the waist, chest bronzed, a red silk handkerchief around his neck, long black hair, sunbathing in the few square feet touched by the noon sun, he conjured up visions of Mediterranean skies and happier days.

Although gifted with a vivid imagination he was remarkably cool and collected, and could set his hand to anything. Not content with his genius at lock-picking, he was a first-class forger, master schemer, radio expert and electrician. He also served the bearded Abbé Jean-Jean at Mass. Lieutenant Guigues
had spent most of his life in Marseilles. He had the typical accent of the region. A pair of mischievously flashing dark eyes and a ready grin completed an appearance of good-humored energy. He understood no English but the British had no better friend among the French contingent. Long before the French left Colditz, Dick Howe and he had become close collaborators, and the friendship between them paid dividends. There was no need even for the British to construct their own wireless hide. Guigues presented Dick with a French set in its stronghold, lock, stock and barrel. Although towards the end of the war the Germans knew the British had a set in action they never found it. They searched until they were blue in the face without success. Eventually the British prisoners made no concealment of the news' bulletins, which were read publicly at the evening meal. The war situation was discussed openly with the Germans, their arguments controverted and their alleged facts and figures contradicted. The receiver was concealed in the eave of the sloping roof above the French quarters—which became British on the departure of the French. This set was Arthur II, with the broken valve replaced.

When a roof is forty feet high from gutter to ridge, it can be appreciated that at least two floors may be built inside it, having dormer windows and comparatively high ceilings. The floor area of rooms within the roof becomes reduced at each level upwards, not only because the two sides of the roof are approaching each other, but because usually a vertical wall is built around the sides of the rooms so that the inmates do not have the impression they are living in a tent. This vertical wall, in the case of rooms at Colditz, was about five feet high. It concealed behind it a small triangular space bounded by the three sides; slanting roof, vertical wall and horizontal ceiling of the room below. The triangular space had to be enlarged out of the seven-foot-thick walls to provide within it enough room for the wireless installation, complete with electric light, switch-gear for the receiver, earphones, a table and two chairs for the operator and the shorthand-writer acting as news-recording telegraphist. Beside it, a second cavity was enlarged to provide a hide for contraband. Entry to these secret apartments was made from the attic which formed the apex of the roof itself.

Guigues also let Dick in on the secret of access to the parcels office, and the interception of contraband in this way was carried on successfully until the end of the war.

The French—some hundreds—were to travel to Lübeck in two groups, and Hauptmann Lange organized everything. On 6 July, the first group were told to pack their heavy luggage; after it was searched it was taken to the approach yard. From there it was taken by lorry to the station and placed in a wagon in the
charge of a sentry. The prisoners themselves with their small kit were taken to the park of the
Schützenhaus
where they were checked for identity and their kit was examined by German security men. They then marched to the station.

The first time everything went smoothly, apparently! A few days later on 12 July the second group, including the Belgians, was prepared in exactly the same way. Eggers was on duty in the
Kommandantur
yard when suddenly a heap of trunks, sacks and blankets, started to move and out tumbled Lieutenant Klein (de Gaullist) gasping for air. He had been rolled up in a pile of blankets and was suffocating.

A second incident occurred when the lorry took the first load of heavy baggage to the station. After it had been unloaded and had returned for the next load one of the sentries noticed the lid of a Canadian Red Cross box move and out came Giles Romilly. Prawitt was furious and Hauptmann Lange was brought to task and later placed under open arrest and transferred to another camp at Mühlberg. He remonstrated in vain that because of his security measures Giles Romilly had failed to escape.

A third incident caused much confusion. Three British officers changed places with three French officers of similar size and features. They passed the identity and the check. The Germans did not find out until two or three days later, even though it had been worked by Lieutenant Fleury about a year previously. So three British went to Lübeck. When these were returned from Lübeck, they turned out to be two genuine British and one Frenchman. And thus it carried on. The Germans took some time to sort it all out.

Eggers remarks that after the last contingent of Poles left Colditz in August, he had a fairly easy time of it with only 228 British and a few Free French officers. But this relative tranquility was disturbed by two interventions by the OKW.

The first arose out of Hitler's need for a further 800,000 troops for the eastern front. The German Home Army was ordered to submit to medical examination, and the fittest one-third would be dispatched to the front. Gephard was sent to Russia, and was killed there by partisans. Priem, on the other hand, though younger than Eggers, was discharged from the Army altogether because it was feared he would collapse at any time. He returned to his post as headmaster near Meseritz and died in August 1943. Eggers, though found fit for active service, remained as LO1. The deputy
Kommandant
, Major Menz, became
Kommandant
of a prison camp near the front at Riga, and was replaced by Major Amthor (whose red face prompted the nickname “Turkeycock” among the prisoners).

The second of the OKW's ideas was to order the Colditz staff to copy the British methods of achieving communication between the War Office and POWs.
Most German POWs were in the United States, and rather than send escape material Eggers was required to send them propaganda and to enquire about POW loyalty to Hitler! Only Nazi Party members were privileged to receive these communications. Eggers commented that the British War Office never thought to boost POW morale with political propaganda.

When the second French batch departed on 12 July a further substitution of officers took place—this time Thibaut (a Belgian) and André Perrin: The Belgian contingent from Colditz went to Lübeck with the French. Then, nearly two months later (8 September), they were transferred to another camp. Now André Perrin escaped successfully—his fourth attempt.

No less than seven Frenchmen left Lübeck on this occasion under Belgian identity. Tragically, the small Frenchman Alfred Gallais was killed when he jumped from a train. It was his third escape attempt.

During this summer, Allied air-raids became a regular and welcome feature of life. The fall of Italy had been greeted with great rejoicing. On 31 August a book was opened on whether the coming second front would be launched from Italy or by landing in Norway.

Captain the Earl of Hopetoun, son of Lord Linlithgow, one-time Viceroy of India, arrived in Colditz with the Eichstatt tunnellers. The OKW promoted him to the category of
Prominenter
—the third now in Colditz. The concentration of
Prominenten
in Colditz gave rise to German rumors of an increase in British military interest in the camp that held them. Swiss papers had reported that a plan was on foot to liberate them by a parachute attack, and get them away by plane. The OKW went so far as to organize a kind of Riot Squad on the Colditz model, on permanent standby, at the training camp at Leisnig. The unit consisted of tanks and lorried infantry to be rushed to Colditz should an air landing be reported in the vicinity.

*
“Bastards! … Pigs! … Traitors! … Chamber-pot makers!”

Autumn and Winter 1943–1944

O
NE BRIGHT MORNING
in August Dick Howe thought of another way out of the Castle. The scheme was daring. He put the wheels of his organization into action.

Lieutenant Mike Harvey RN, officer in charge of stooging roster, was to chart the movements of “Franz Josef,” one of the German NCO commanders. Lulu Lawton and Bricky Forbes were to cut necessary bars in two windows, one on either side of the Castle. Bos'n Crisp was to prepare two thirty-foot lengths of rope. “Rex” Harrison would have to produce three perfect German uniforms, one for a sergeant.

Major W. F. “Andy” Anderson RE and Scarlet O'Hara were commissioned to produce two German rifles, two bayonet scabbards and a holster complete with revolver, and Scarlet was to deal also with the foundry work for buttons, badges, medals and belt clasps.

Finally, the principal actor in the whole drama had to be coached and transformed into the mirror image of Franz Josef.

The elderly and somewhat stout NCO (one Rothenberger) who was to be given a twin brother was not called Franz Josef for nothing. He was a living impersonation of Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia; ruddy complexion, puffy cheeks, gray hair, portly bearing and an enormous ginger-colored white-tipped mustache which covered half of his face. Provided this could be faithfully copied, it would in itself provide a magnificent mask. Teddy Barton was one of the theater past-masters. Besides producing shows and acting in them, he had the professional touch when it came to make-up.