Colditz (31 page)

In the meantime all the prisoners had been returned to the yard and a special roll-call was ordered by Lange. It was then discovered that two prisoners were missing. They were Flight-Lieutenant Jack Best and Lieutenant Michael Harvey RN. They had disappeared, the Germans thought, in the park parade chaos. In due course, the OKW in Berlin were told that these two had escaped successfully. In fact, they were being concealed in the camp as ghosts.

The
Appell
lasted from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and was a riot. Pete Tunstall and Don Thom were hauled off to the cells. They were let out again later in the day awaiting “charge.” At morning
Appell
the next day Don Thom was charged with doing something odd with his arms and legs and thus behaving himself incorrectly on
Appell
. He was sentenced to ten days, which he carried out in May.

On 11 May as usual the half-dozen prisoners in the solitary cells in the Castle were given their hour of exercise. Escorted by a corporal in charge and a sentry in front and behind, in single file, they passed through the guardhouse, to the turret staircase (the same one that Airey Neave had descended), and sortied out through a small door on to the terrace. The corporal took up the rear of the procession descending the staircase. Bag Dickinson sortied first and marched on behind the leading sentry towards the far end of the terrace. Don Thom was second out. As soon as he sortied, van Rood, who was third, stopped in the doorway and blocked it. Thom leaped over the parapet of the terrace, down a drop of thirty feet. He broke his fall twice by gripping the bars outside two small windows, one above the other, which gave light to the lower part of the circular staircase. There was a machine-gun post in a pagoda facing him as he landed. It was forty yards away at the corner of a small garden. The sentry saw him immediately and fired his rifle once, missing him, before springing to his machine-gun. Thom had run thirty-five yards by then and was almost under the pagoda. The sentry in it was powerless. But two more sentries on the beat in the garden and round a corner heard the shot and the sentry's shouting. So also
did the corporal (who had dived out through the door) and the two sentries up on the terrace. They started shooting. The two sentries in the garden ran to the scene and joined in.

By this time every prison window facing the terrace was crammed with Frenchmen in their quarters. They went mad and tried to upset the concentration of the sentries. While on the terrace, Bag Dickinson and van Rood obstructed their guards in every way possible.

Don Thom was now climbing over two barbed-wire fences each six feet high. A fusillade of shots surrounded him—one grazed his scalp and a second tipped his heel. He was soon over the fences and tumbling down a precipitous slope to the stream. Bushes helped break his fall. He was over the stream and climbing its steep bank before sentries in the park spotted him. They fired at him as he passed between the trees and the sentries from the garden joined in. Luckily the machine-gun was now useless, being above the trees. Thom now had 100 yards to run, uphill, to the final obstacle, the high park wall with wire on top. He was nearly exhausted, his heel and scalp bleeding. The park sentries coming from another direction were on his level and closing on him. He could not find footholds in the wall. He could not climb it. He turned and raised his arms. The firing had already stopped.

Pete Tunstall was soon up again for court-martial. Black Campbell's précis report of the proceedings is a gem of understatement. The trial took place at Leipzig on 7 May.

The “solitary” he had served as a result of his court-martial in November for the water-bomb did not prevent Peter Tunstall from doing it again. On the second occasion he used an over-size water bomb. It was high summer and the
Kommandant
appeared in a spotless white duck uniform, followed by five Germans in the brown uniforms of Nazi politicians, with massive leather belts encircling their paunches, their left arms swathed in broad, red armbands carrying the black swastika in a white circle. Their shoulders, collars and hats were festooned with tinsel braid like Christmas trees. They were
Gauleiters
from Leipzig and Chemnitz.

The
Gefreiter
called “Auntie” ran ahead of them, up the British staircase and burst into the mess-room. Prisoners were having their tea and his shouts of “
Achtung! Achtung!
” were received with the usual complement of “raspberries” and rude remarks. Tea continued and his more frenzied “
Achtungs!
” were ignored. The
Kommandant
walked in at the head of his procession. He had
expected everyone to be standing glassily at attention. Instead he had to wait three minutes—the time it took for the more ardent tea drinkers to note his presence “officially.”

Benches and chairs scraped, mugs and plates clattered and men rose to their feet, wiping their mouths and blowing their noses with large khaki handkerchiefs in a studied display of insolence of finely calculated duration.

The
Gauleiters
raised their arms in the Nazi salute with their arms slightly bent—Hitler-fashion. The salute was returned by the members of one table, including Scorgie Price and Peter Tunstall, in a manner which appeared to please the
Gauleiters
. The prisoners saluted with a variation of the “V” sign in which the fingers were closed instead of open and the thumb facing inwards. The
Gauleiters
, happy to think that their importance was appreciated, saluted again, and the salute was acknowledged again but with greater vigor. As the procession passed between the rows of men standing to at their tables, the cue was taken up and prisoners everywhere gave the new salute, which was acknowledged punctiliously at every turn by the
Gauleiters
.

They turned, retraced their steps, saluting and being saluted, beaming with smiles at their pleasant welcome and finally left the quarters.

A water-bomb just missed them as they emerged from the British doorway, but spattered the
Kommandant
's duck uniform with mud. He shouted for the guard, hurried his visitors through the gates and returned alone. A posse, dispatched upstairs at the double to find the culprit, was not quick enough. Pete was learning: nothing could be pinned on him. The
Kommandant
left the courtyard followed by cries of “
Kellner!
(Waiter!)
Bringen Sie mir einen whisky soda!
”

His exit signaled the arrival of the Riot Squad. Windows were ordered to be closed; rifles were levelled upwards at those delaying to comply with the shouted commands. Scarlet O'Hara, sleeping peacefully beside an open window, awoke from a siesta in time to hear the tail-end of the shouting. Poking his head out as far as the bars he cautioned the squad: “
Scheissen Sie nicht
, my good men,
scheissen Sie nicht!
”—all to no avail. A bullet zipped through the opening and he closed the window from a kneeling position, cursing the ill manners of the “uncouth b— Huns.” The word he had pronounced was
scheissen
(shit) not
schiessen
.

The
Kommandant
never appeared again in his white duck uniform.

An interesting unsolved mystery, which will almost certainly never be solved now, is introduced here by an entry in Platt's diary for 25 May:

In a conversation with Dr. Eggers after evening
Appell
he referred to an entry for November in the portion of my diary now being
geprüft
. The
point raised was my account of the case of “Sheriff” and the Leipzig general dealer. He, Dr. Eggers, was surprised that the prisoners had regarded the “general dealer” as having filled the inauspicious role of stool-pigeon and assured me it was not the case and that sentence of death had been carried out.

First, it may be noted—as an aside—that Eggers is reading of events recorded in the diary in November, in the month of May following—that is five months later. Throughout the diary there appear to be several such instances in which the “interval” would appear to be less than five months. Platt was running a risk here. The information and its availability to the enemy comes within the scope of that “gray” area in intelligence matters where information revealed which deals with the past may nonetheless betray pointers or clues in the future. Further, the OKW issued a “News for Security Officers”; Eggers, in his diary, says that from this they learned that at another camp the laundry had been used for communications between prisoners and people on the outside. Lange, the security officer at IVC, ordered an immediate check on the laundry and found chocolate, love letters and cigarettes going out, and
Schnaps
coming in. This was soon stopped. There can be little doubt that extracts from Platt's diary were submitted for this journal.

As for “Sheriff” (Lieutenant Adam Niedenthal), the reader will recall that the so-called “general dealer,” or the “Leipzig wholesaler,” the German sentry, was reported to have been shot by the Germans (see
Chapter 13
). Are Eggers' words to be trusted in this matter?

Logging backwards, after the discovery of the
Saalhaus
tunnel and the coded messages, Sheriff was in solitary confinement for four months. He had a lot to say when he came out on 23 November. Unfortunately the only report extant comes again from Platt who in his diary for that day (the entry he discussed with Eggers) adds a lot more about the British connection with the “general dealer”:

Sheriff Lt. Niedenthal, came out of confinement today after sixteen weeks. He was taken to the cells in July for questioning re the Heath Robinson typewriter which had been found and confiscated. And thereby hangs a tale. Sometime about the end of March this year a new German sentry appeared in British quarters guarding the
Tischler
[carpenter]. He was keen to converse with us and at once declared himself willing to assist with our escape schemes, if the pay were good enough. It was, and arrangement was soon made whereby he would furnish us with a quantity of tools and
equipment for general escape work. He received a personal rake-off of 100% of the value of anything he produced and was paid in R.M. [
Reichsmarks
], cigarettes, coffee, chocolate, or whatever currency he chose. Usually he took as much chocolate, coffee and cigarettes as he could get. There were several things, however, about his dealings with us that suggested to the oldest inhabitants who had been bitten before, that his interest was a little farther reaching than personal gain would require. He was a shade too eager to know the exact nature of certain schemes that were then afoot and showed more than a passing interest in the time and place at which they would mature.

Knowing that the last thing the Germans wanted them to have was a radio, they tested him by asking him to get them one. Despite his many promises, he never complied. Then he hardened their suspicions enormously by offering his address in exchange for the one in Leipzig from which he knew (and he claimed Authority also knew) escapers obtained assistance. Further he advised escapers to leave the train before Leipzig general station and catch a train to his house.

Then he disappeared. The Polish tunnel was discovered, and Niedenthal was arrested, and interrogated by the Gestapo. Platt goes on:

Sheriff made it known that he believed the Wholesale Dealer to have been a stooge, at which the Gestapo, he thought, laughed rather too heartily. This interrogation lasted six hours! Sheriff was not proceeded against, i.e. he was not court-martialled for bribery, nor was he sentenced by the Camp
Kommandant
, but he has been in the cells since the 21st July until today.