Colditz (38 page)

The names of those permitted by the Gestapo to be examined by the Commission for repatriation were announced at the mid-day
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on 5 May. Six names out of the twenty-nine were omitted. The SBO stated categorically that either all twenty-nine would appear or none. A special roll-call sounded on Saturday the 6th at 9:15 a.m. and the officers paraded. After the count had been checked by Hauptmann Eggers, Püpcke called once more for the twenty-three to step forward. Nobody moved.

Eggers, speaking in English, addressed Colonel Tod. “Parade the walking cases in front at once,
Herr Oberst
. Stretcher cases will be inspected later.”

The tall, gray-haired Royal Scots Fusilier, standing alone in front of his men, replied coldly: “
Herr Hauptmann
, this action of the German High Command is despicable. It is dishonest, unjust and cowardly. The twenty-nine men must be allowed to go forward for examination. I will no longer hold myself responsible for the actions of my officers. The parade from this moment is yours. Take it!” And with that he turned about, marched back to the ranks behind him, turned again, and stood at attention, at the right of the line.

Eggers, speaking in English, started to harangue the parade: “British officers, you will remain on parade until those ordered for examination by …” His further words were lost as, with one accord, the parade broke up in disorder and men stamped around the courtyard, drowning his voice with the shuffling of boots and the clatter of wooden clogs on the cobbles.

This was mutiny. Püpcke hurried to the gate and spoke through the grille. Within seconds the Riot Squad entered the courtyard. The two German officers, surrounded by their men with fixed bayonets and followed by three NCOs with revolvers drawn, forged into the crowd before them to identify and seize the men approved for interview, take them out of the courtyard by force, bang the gates behind them and leave the prisoners to nurse their wounded feelings in impotence.

The German officers and their NCO snoops peered, now to the left, now to the right, into the sullen faces around them. The mêlée in the courtyard continued unceasingly. The Swiss members of the Commission were in the
Kommandantur
waiting for the proposed repatriates. They became impatient and demanded to be allowed to see the Senior British Officer. The courtyard was by now in an uproar with jeering, booing, catcalls and singing competing for the maximum volume of sound. The Swiss could hear the riot in progress. The
Kommandant
was spotted from a window giving orders outside the gate. He dared not enter. Püpcke left the courtyard for several minutes, then returned. He sought out Colonel Tod and spoke to him. The SBO was conducted out to meet the Commission at 10:30 a.m.

He apologized for his part in the delay and explained how the
Kommandant
's list forbade the presence of six officers by order of the OKW. This amazed the Commission and they demanded an explanation. The
Kommandant
and the German member of the Commission then telephoned to Berlin. The deadlock was broken—Berlin gave way.

At 11:45 a.m. the Commission began its work.

Silverwood-Cope surprisingly was passed; also Harry Elliott and nine others. Julius Green was passed but later the OKW categorically refused to let him go because he too was
Deutschfeindlich
! The three de Gaullists were passed. They were of the six initially forbidden to appear. Duggie Bader was not passed. He was also one of the six. Errol Flynn was passed.

The German capitulation was complete and Allied solidarity, aided by the Swiss Commission outside, had won a memorable victory. The Germans' arrogance of 1941 and 1942 was changing and, from this day in May 1944 onwards, the prisoners in Colditz began to feel solid ground once more beneath their feet.

The episode was an important turning-point. The prisoners knew that Hitler and his minions intended to use them as hostages in the hour of defeat. Here was a gleam of hope.

Padre Platt commented in his diary:

Now it was really like old times, the guard in position and at the ready, and prisoners shouting and singing, and whistling. “If only Priem were here!” was the lament of the old lags! This kind of party was right up his street … he would have had musketry loosed off in all direction; but not a shot was fired!

Eggers has some light to throw on this episode:

Security approval was required for the applicants and the O.K.W. right away ruled out the De Gaullists on our list. They also objected to Wing Commander Douglas Bader, on the grounds that his leg amputations dated from a pre-war accident and were not war wounds. They also objected to Captain Green, the dentist from Lamsdorf, possibly because he had been responsible for spoiling my plan to plant Lieut. “Grey” in the camp as a “stooge.” They also objected to the presence on the list of Flight-Lieutenant Hallifax, an officer who had been very badly burnt when shot down during a raid over Berlin.

The case of Dan Hallifax RAF is exceptional and should be recorded.

A fighter pilot, Dan was shot down on 15 May 1942. His aircraft was on fire, as was his oxygen mask. The result—Dan's hair was burnt off, as were his ears. The rest of his face was a mess. As one got to know him the injuries vanished. He was Dan Hallifax—a wonderful, charming man.

From the moment he was shot down his mind was full of just one thing—to get back to England as soon as possible, to the skin-grafting magicians. He was acutely troubled by the belief that the longer it was delayed, the more difficult it would be to rebuild his face and hands.

Efforts to get repatriated achieved nothing, so the only hope for Dan was to get home under his own steam—which got him into Colditz on 14 November 1943.

As soon as he arrived in Colditz he made another bid for repatriation which went through the SBO and the normal channels. He had been passed for repatriation long before he arrived in Colditz under Article 69 of the Geneva Convention as far back as 6 June 1942. The Germans replied that under Article 53 they were entitled to keep him a prisoner for an alleged “criminal offense.” But Dan had never been charged with an offense. Even Eggers knew nothing of this “offense.” Colonel Tod wrote to the OKW. In the meantime,
Dan missed the repatriation contingent which left Germany on or about 18 May.

The SBO received a reply from the OKW on 12 June, now saying he was not held under Article 53 but “retained on security grounds.” The SBO promptly wrote a letter of the case history with all the relevant facts to the Protecting Power, asking them to inform His Majesty's Government, and to the Mixed Medical Commission. Dan Hallifax eventually left Colditz for repatriation on 7 January 1945.

On Whit Sunday, 28 May, Colditz saw and heard the biggest air-raid so far, in the afternoon. Air-raid sirens—no less than ten blasts—at 2:10 p.m. signified planes approaching nearby. Leipzig was attacked and the hot air blast from huge detonations was felt at the Castle windows. When formations of bombers, returning after unloading their bombs, escorted by fighters, for the first time ever passed directly over the Castle, the reaction of the prisoners was uncontrollable. They howled and cheered and danced as no football crowd has ever done. Not an enemy plane seemed to be in sight. The Leipzig anti-aircraft guns had disabled one plane. Four men were seen to bail out. “Straggler” planes came and went, quite low, and were given a tremendous cheer. Far to the west, several planes were seen to crash, whether fighters or bombers, enemy or Allied, could not be discerned.

Later, one of the four unlucky ones who had bailed out was seen approaching the
Schloss
under guard. He was given a rousing cheer. And after he had passed out of sight under the western wall going towards the entrance, the prisoners rushed into the
Saalhaus
hoping to see him if he was brought into the
Kommandantur
. His flying boots and Mae West jacket were spotted in the
Kommandantur
yard but not he. Then an ambulance arrived, evidently with the other three—one of whom at least was thought to be wounded as he made no attempt to keep his parachute from swaying as he came down.

If ever dull monotony was shattered, it was that day! British air supremacy had passed out of the realm of newspaper reports into mass formations of bombers, with an umbrella of fighters, sailing into sight as unmolested as though they were flying over England.

On 4 June after services and the normal mid-day
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, a special King's Birthday parade was held. The officers conducted themselves with military precision and the SBO led three rousing cheers for HM King George VI.

Purdy was seen leaving the Castle under escort two days later, just as rumors floated into the POWs of an Allied invasion. (It indeed began on the 6th.)

In June 1944, shortly after D-Day, two visitors came to Colditz, in the uniforms of the British Free Corps—John Amery's collaboration corps. The initials BFC were on the arm-bands they wore. They said to the Germans they wanted a chance to talk to the prisoners, with a view to getting some of them to join up in the BFC. It was hardly the moment to expect the British to begin active collaboration with the enemy!

While the
Kommandant
would not take the risk of any trouble that might arise from escorting these two “recruiting officers” around the Castle, their leaflets were distributed among the POW mail. These leaflets stated that no action was intended hostile to the British Crown. The war was condemned as the work of Jews and international finance, and it was declared to be a betrayal of the British Empire. The pamphlet ended with an appeal for an Anglo- German alliance.

The prisoners at first burnt all the pamphlets and then, on second thoughts, demanded more as souvenirs. The visitors by then had gone and there were no more of the leaflets left. The SBO protested about the insertion of the pamphlets in the British mail and received an apology from the
Kommandant
stating it was “the error of an underling.”

The underling, however, was none other than Eggers!

On Thursday, 8 June, Doc. Henderson, returning from duty at Lamsdorf, reported the first news of the great tunnel escape at
Stalag Luft
III, Sagan. As an indirect result of this escape, Eggers travelled to Sagan to study the security arrangements there. What he found was a German Guard Company of 250 men guarding 7,000 British and American Air Force personnel—i.e. one guard per twenty-eight prisoners. The comparable figure for Colditz was about one for one! There were about 200 POWs in Colditz in May 1944.

On 16 June, the guard under the archway halfway out of the Castle heard a noise beneath his feet. At this spot there was a manhole cover. There was another one further up the approach yard towards the guardroom and a third just outside the courtyard gate. All were in a stretch of about fifty yards of cobbles. The guard gave a shout and out came the Riot Squad and the security officer. “Up with all three drain covers” was the order.

The German Staff Paymaster Heinze, who was born in about 1888, a true Saxon, was wont to strut the cobbles of Colditz complete with boots and spurs, long cloak and sword! He loved to play a warrior-type of the days of the Kaiser and he loved to hunt the British. He came from Dresden. He had lost two sons at the front. As the manhole covers came off, he happened to pass by and looking down one, he spied the English “curs.” He spat at them, called them
“stinking swine” and passed on. They were indeed “stinking.” The SBO obtained an apology later.

Three tunnellers, Dick Lorraine, Bos'n Crisp and Dominic Bruce, were taken out of the last manhole. There was an immediate
Sonderappell
. After this
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, an effort was made to save as much of the tunnel as possible within the POW courtyard. Three men, Bob Barnes, Alan Cocksedge and Rex Baxter, went down the shaft from the entrance in the ex-Polish long-room. There was a vertical shaft in the thickness of the three-yard-thick wall down to the canteen. From this a connection was made to the drain under the canteen. Unfortunately the
Sonderappell
had given the Germans time to work their way up the tunnel (the drains) and they met the three Britishers at the bottom of the shaft. The whole length of this shaft and sewer tunnel was over a hundred yards.

The news of the attempt on Hitler's life came through on 21 July. It altered little as far as the prisoners were concerned. It affected the Germans seriously. Eggers reports that they started wondering: “How would the Armed Forces as a whole come out of this plot formed within their ranks?”

The Officer
Korps
got its answer very shortly. Up to now the Hitler salute had been given by German officers only when entering or leaving their mess, or as a form of unofficial salute when not wearing their caps. From now on it was to be used officially between ourselves and also as between officers and prisoners. The
Wehrmacht
salute was replaced by the raised arm salute of the
Partei
.

We had to put up with a great deal of ridicule in the yard for the next day or two after this order was propagated, but in the end things quietened down and the Nazi salute came to be taken as something in no way out of the ordinary….

When we [non-
Partei
soldiers] felt safe, with the
Partei
men outside the room, some of us did discuss the point—what to do if and when, and as, the end came. Although with all of us the unspoken hope was “may the Americans get here before the Russians,” there were differing reactions even to this possibility.

One said, “I'll shoot myself and my family. But before that I'll go into the yard and finish off a few of the prisoners first.” [That was no doubt Paymaster Heinze.]

Another said, “You can do what you like with your family, they're your affair, but the prisoners are the responsibility of all of us, and what one may do may be avenged upon the whole lot of us here.”

As a matter of fact, when the order about giving the Hitler salute came through to Colditz, Hauptmann Püpcke visited the SBO privately to explain to him (apologetically) why he would have to use the salute. The SBO called a meeting and explained the situation. Hence normality and courteous reception of Püpcke the next morning at
Appell
.