Colditz (28 page)

Everyone had readily appreciated that free access to the parcels office would be an inestimable boon, but there was a formidable obstacle: on the door in the courtyard leading to the office the Germans had fixed to the old lock a cruciform key device which prevented it from being picked. Operating the device—which in turn operated the old lock—required a small key in the form of a cross, which when inserted moved several tiny pistons in their cylinders. Each piston moved a different distance, the accuracy of which was gauged to a thousandth of an inch. When all the pistons were moved accurately a circular drum could be rotated by the key to operate the lock.

Fredo managed to study one of these devices until he understood its mechanics completely. But a key was indispensable. He would have to make one. He cut out a key blank from one of the spindles stolen from the clock-tower, and a colleague had the idea of turning razor-blades into metal saws by cutting along the chamfered edge of the blade with a pair of scissors, to give a finely jagged effect. With such a saw Fredo was able to tool the appropriate notches on the key blank.

In one highly organized lightning operation, the actual lock was removed and the notches in the key blank were sawn to the exact depth required. The key worked and the lock was replaced. Having opened the principal door with his cruciform key, there were two further doors and more lock-picking before Guigues reached the actual parcels store. Every visit was a major operation involving seventeen men each with a different role to play. Fredo's first ploy was to order from his wife two parcels of tools. When they arrived he intercepted them, replacing them with innocent parcels before distribution (and examination by the Germans) took place. To celebrate this remarkable success, Abbé Jean-Jean had to open a bottle of communion wine.

Now the French could smuggle in anything they liked, but the process did not evolve without the occasional crisis. Once Fredo found a terrified cat with its kittens in the first room which fled from him as he opened door after door. When the time came for him to return, the cat evaded his grasp, with the result that the next day the Germans found the cat's kittens dead in the first room and the mother locked up in another.

Eventually the Germans installed an electric alarm on the locks of the parcels office. But this was no threat to Fredo and his clandestine visits because he intercepted the circuit before the installation was complete, carrying it through to the floor above. This particular achievement took place in May 1942 and was eventually put to bizarre use. Noticing a burly British officer ineffectively trying to pick the locks of the parcels office with a piece of wire (it was Errol Flynn, who, sadly, by this time was “going round the bend”), Fredo went straight to Dick Howe and demanded Flynn's removal. The last thing he wanted was a new set of locks. Dick indicated that Fredo could easily end Flynn's intervention himself. At once Fredo signaled to a colleague (looking down from the French quarters) to activate the alarm. Seconds later a squad of Goons rushed into the courtyard and carried Flynn off.

When Guigues left Colditz on 1 October, his keys, his picks and sundry instructions were inherited by two colleagues, Yves Desmarchelier and Robert Lalue.

At morning
Appell
on 15 October no fewer than ten British officers were found to be missing. This is what had happened.

Dick Howe had come to me towards the end of September to tell me of a scheme hatched by Ronnie Littledale and Billie Stephens. The idea was to sortie from one of the windows of the kitchen over the low roofs of various store buildings in the adjoining
Kommandantur
courtyard (which were in full view of all the windows of the
Kommandantur
above the ground floor), descend to the ground and cross the path of a sentry when his back was turned. The next thing was to crawl across the dimly lit area in front of the
Kommandantur
to a small open pit visible from the POW windows. At this point the escapers would still be in the bosom of the enemy, yet the plan went no further! I said the scheme was lunatic, but Dick confessed he wanted to let them have a shot. “And I want you to go with them, just to see they don't get into any trouble.” I could see no prospect other than another month in the cooler, but I thought I might as well agree to join them.

I wondered if it would be possible to break into the tall block of buildings from which Dominic Bruce had escaped on 8 September. Bruce was doing his resulting solitary at the time, but I smuggled a message to him with his food and in due course had an answer. He pointed out that once inside this building one could descend from unbarred windows on the far side into the Castle's moat. The top floors were empty, but Germans occupied the floors below. There was a large door into the building which led to an unused staircase, but it was visible from almost everywhere and in full view of the
Kommandantur
sentries. This door was also locked (albeit not with a cruciform device). It was true that the floodlights at night threw the doorway into shadow, but the main thoroughfare from the outer Castle gateway to the entrance of the
Kommandantur
passed within a yard of it.

Using a stooge I entered the kitchen and examined the window giving on to the flat roofs. Working on four successive evenings I sawed through the head of a rivet on one of the bars (taking enormous care not to alert a sentry on his beat a mere fifteen yards away), and on the fifth evening removed the rivet itself with a silent working punch made for me by ERA Wally Hammond. Once the rivet was removed, the bar could be bent back to allow a man to squeeze through the window. I camouflaged the joint with a clay rivet.

I invited Hank Wardle to join us (he agreed we hadn't a chance), making a party of four. A further six men would be concealed about the Castle as ghosts to cover our escape. We four all had our identity papers, general maps, money and
compass, kept usually in our “creepers.” The map of the Singen border-crossing into Switzerland we had to commit to memory—I had forbidden frontier maps to be carried many months before. Clothes had long since been prepared. I had one of my cloth caps, converted RAF trousers, a windjacket and a German civilian overcoat which I had bought off a French officer who had obtained it from a French orderly who in turn had access to the village. I also had a pair of black shoes.

Hank and I decided to pose as Flemish workmen collaborating with the Germans. As
Flamands
we could pass off our bad German and our bad French, and we would be unlikely to run into someone who spoke Flemish. We constructed elaborate case-histories.

We also carried cardboard (ersatz leather) suitcases which had been sent for from Britain containing Army clothing. The value of a suitcase was that a man without one travelling across Germany on main-line expresses looked like a fugitive. It would be hell lugging them out of the camp, but well worth the effort in the end. We would need to wrap them in blankets to muffle sound; in any case, we were to take enough sheets and blankets to make a fifty-foot descent.

After evening
Appell
on 14 October we all made the highly dangerous run to the kitchen; Malcolm McColm was with us to cover our traces. Balaclava helmets and gloves covered our white skins.

Hank and I got through the window, made our way across the low roofs and dropped to the ground. A British orchestra—which the Germans had had several nights to get used to—was playing in the
Saalhaus
, conducted by Douglas Bader. Bader had a clear view of the sentry for the whole of his beat. The idea was to use the music for signaling: when they stopped playing it meant the escapers could cross his path.

The orchestra was playing as arranged, but each time I started across on the cessation of the music, it started again. Then I heard German voices. It was the duty officer on his rounds. Suspicious, he was questioning the sentry. Five minutes later the music stopped again, but this time I was caught napping, and I dared not risk a late dash. I waited a long time and the music did not begin again. Obviously things had gone wrong for the orchestra. I decided to wait an hour, to let suspicions die down.

In the hope that we could hide in that time from any passing Goon, I tried the handle of a door in the angle of the wall where we were hiding. It opened, and we entered warily. It was pitch-black inside. We went through a second door and took refuge in a room which seemed to contain no more than rubbish.

When the hour was up, we crept out again, and moved to the end of the wall as the sentry's footsteps indicated that he was turning on his beat. I peered round
the corner, saw the soldier ten yards off marching away, and with Hank close behind tiptoed across the pathway (we wore socks over our shoes). Soon we were hiding in a small shrubbery near the entrance to the
Kommandantur
. Ronnie and Billie clambered across the roofs from the kitchen when they saw us cross the path, and in no time we were all in the pit.

My next job was to see if I could open the door into the building from which Dominic Bruce had escaped. It was fifteen yards away. I reached it, and apart from a hair-raising interruption when I heard Priem returning from an evening in the town, I worked for an hour without success. We would have to find another way out.

A tunnel led from our pit under a verandah. We felt our way along until we came to a cellar. At the far end was an air-vent or chimney flue. At first it seemed impossible for a man to negotiate this shaft, but after a few moments of despair I found that by removing some of my clothing I could slide up easily enough. I could see that it led to a barred opening at the level of the ground outside—that is, on the far side of the building, where lay the moat for which we were heading. One of the bars was loose in its mortar socket; I freed one end and bent it nearly double. We could just squeeze through!

It was an enormous struggle, and we each had to strip naked, but by 3:30 a.m. we were all lying in bushes on the moat side of the
Kommandantur
. Indeed we were on the very edge of the moat. We peered over. Luckily the moat wall was stepped into three successive descents; the drops were about twelve feet and the steps were about two yards wide. We made a couple of sheet-ropes and climbed down, fully clothed once more. It was 4:30 a.m. By 5:15 a.m. we were over the outer boundary wall—none too soon, because we had a long way to go before dawn.

Eggers was in Dresden attending a conference called to discuss the use of as many POWs as possible in German industry, a need arising out of the heavy losses Germany was suffering on the eastern front:

I returned from Dresden on October 15th and found all passengers being checked by the police when I changed trains at Dobeln. My heart sank. I knew without asking. “Yes,” they said. “Four prisoners missing from that
verdammten Sonderlager
of yours!”

That morning four British officers had been found missing after the usual hullaballoo.

Once again it was a report from a civilian coming up through the
Tiergarten
which had warned us that something was up. She had found some suspicious blue and white material (the usual bedsheets) under some bushes.

Although they found plenty of evidence to indicate the route we had taken, they simply could not believe that we could have done so and not been seen by the sentry. Eventually they concluded that somehow or other we had escaped via the
Saalhaus
.

News of the record-breaking success of the four escapers in reaching Switzerland became known in Coiditz—according to Platt's diary—on 9 November. Hank and I crossed the Swiss frontier on 18 October, a Sunday night. Billie and Ronnie arrived safely over the frontier the following evening at 10:30 p.m.

On 23 October, Colonel Breyer of the OKW, Leipzig, visited Colditz with the object of showing two high-ranking Italian officers, in typically festooned flamboyant uniform, around the prison. Eggers records that they realized this would provide a festive occasion for the POWs. In fact, the Italians had already been spotted from a prison window and loud cries of “Macaroni” were already wafting into the
Kommandantur
. Eggers persuaded the
Kommandant
to show the visitors around the outside of the Castle only.

News concerning the men who escaped successfully from Colditz in 1941 and 1942 trickled into the camp slowly, and was sketchy when it arrived, to say the least of it. Nevertheless, when it came it boosted the prisoners' morale considerably. A first wave of elation started about a week after an escape, when, with the continued absence of the escapers and glum reactions from the Germans upon questioning by the SBO as to their whereabouts, it was reasonably safe to assume that the men were out of enemy territory, provided they had not been killed en route.

Reliable confirmation arrived by various routes: sometimes a picture postcard slipped through the censor's net, written in a disguised hand from a fictitious character, but leaving no uncertainty in the mind of the recipient as to the meaning of the seemingly innocuous phrases in the text.

Hank Wardle, often called Murgatroyd by Rupert Barry, thus wrote to him from Switzerland in November 1942:

We are having a holiday here (in Switzerland) and are sorry you are not with us. Give our dear love to your friend Dick. Love from

Harriette and Phyllis Murgatroyd.

“Harriette” and “Phyllis,” with the H and P heavily emphasized, were obvious cover-names for Hank and Pat.

At the end of November 1942, ERAs Wally Hammond and Tubby Lister, both submariners captured in 1940, made a formal application to the
Kommandant
to be removed from Colditz and sent to their rightful camp—after all, they were not officers but petty officers. Having had their training at Colditz they knew that to escape from a troops' camp would seem child's play. This was because troops went out daily from their moderately guarded cantonments to work (as the Geneva Convention permitted for other ranks), often unguarded, in factory or field. Eventually, their request granted, they set off for the troops' camp at Lamsdor. From there they escaped in no time at all, and after a hilarious and exciting journey, they crossed the Swiss frontier safely on 19 December.