Colditz (39 page)

On 27 July, Harry Elliott, Skipper Barnett and Louis Estève departed from Colditz on their repatriation journey at 4 a.m. Charles Hutt left at the same time on 4 August. On 8 August, a large white painted notice was nailed to the
Kellerhaus
wall in the courtyard with large black lettering proclaiming “Camp Order No 21: POWs escaping will be shot at.” Several officers took pleasure in informing Mike Sinclair of the new order! An ironic warning as well as a cynical joke!

On 23 August three counter-intelligence officers of the American Army arrived in Colditz. The senior of them, Colonel Florimund Duke of the American Signal Corps, had parachuted over Hungary with the other two officers on a secret mission code-named “Sparrow” to try and prevent Admiral Horthy (Regent of Hungary) from joining forces with Hitler's Germany. The other two were Captain Guy T. Nunn, US Infantry, and Captain Alfred Suarez of the US Army Engineers. Mission Sparrow originated in the OSS headquarters of Allen W. Dulles in Berne.

The three officers had been dropped in Hungary not far from the Yugoslav border on the night of 15 March 1944. Duke was forty-nine years old. By making this parachute jump, his first ever, he became the second oldest American paratrooper in the Second World War. Hitler pre-empted the scheme by summoning Admiral Horthy to meet him at Klessheim on the 17th. Germany then invaded Hungary, and Duke and his team were captured. They took the opportunity just in time of giving a very large sum in Louis d'Or into the safe-keeping of Major Kiraly, a Hungarian officer.

These Americans suffered months of abominable treatment at the hands of their captors and would have been put to death in obedience to Hitler's secret order (as the Musketoon commandos had been) had their existence not been uncovered by the Swiss Protecting Power.

With them, because he had been discovered by the Swiss at the same time, was an “American” major, Kiril Sabadosh. His captors could not understand why a man in American uniform could not speak his own language. They assumed he was a spy and handed him over to the Gestapo. In fact Sabadosh was Yugoslav. He had volunteered to serve in a Yugoslav bomber squadron which was sent to
train in the United States. He was shot down during a bombing raid on his own native city of Belgrade.

Duke had an extraordinary story about his imprisonment in the
Landesgericht
prison in Vienna. In the yard was a bloodstained guillotine. Every cell was a solitary cell. It was an up-to-date prison in that every cell had a flushing lavatory. No private telephone system was provided for the condemned men, but by emptying the lavatory bowl air-lock—a nauseating job—and preventing the bowl from reflushing, an internal telephone system was provided by speaking tube—the lavatory piping. Duke had to put his head into the bowl, along which, with the foul odors, came the sound of voices. He had a last conversation in broken languages with the man in the cell below, who was guillotined the next day. His last words were: “Avenge us!”

By this secret telephone Duke heard of the Normandy Invasion on 6 June long before the news ever became public.

To the Americans, after months in solitary, having a whole castle to roam around seemed for a while like freedom. Suarez found out quickly that they did not need any more wireless experts in Colditz, but he also found out that Kiril Sabadosh was the chess champion of Yugoslavia. Suarez vowed to himself he would beat him and, after many days and games, he did. Now that he was the undefeated chess champion of Yugoslavia, he announced he would not play any more, and he didn't.

Nunn played chess for a while. Then he started to learn Czech from Flight-Lieutenant Cenek Chaloupka RAF.

Duke took to the bridge table. For the first time in his life, he now had a fine handlebar mustache. He had started it long before Colditz to give himself something to think about during the endless solitary hours. Captain Eggers made a point about it.

“Have you always worn a mustache?” he asked.

“Hell, no! I never had time until I became a prisoner-of-war.”

“Yes,” sighed Eggers, “and it will be the first thing that comes off if you escape.”

In dealing with the
Kommandant
the Americans were represented at first by the British Senior Officer. Seeing advantages in separate recognition, Duke went to see Tod. “We have no complaint,” Duke explained. “But if the Americans are recognized, we'll be two against one.” The SBO was all for it. But the
Kommandant
at first would not see why four Americans should have the same kind of recognition as 200 British. Duke argued, “The Americans fight beside the British, not under them. We are not under British command as POWs. If you deny us separate representation, then you violate the Geneva Convention.” He won his point.

Duke had fought in the US Air Force in the First World War. He could not be kept away from the hazards of the Second. He was a handsome, quiet man with a consoling personality. In civilian life he was the advertising manager of the magazine
Time
.

Suarez—known as “Al”—was of Spanish descent. He loved adventure; he had volunteered and fought against the insurgent forces of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. A gay daredevil with a great sense of humor.

Brigadier Edmund Davies arrived with seven other British officers at the same time as the Americans; they were likewise beneficiaries of Swiss vigilance. Davies had been parachuted into Albania and wounded in an interpartisan affray in the spring of 1944. One of his team, Major J. H. C. Chesshire RE, had also been wounded. They went to a hospital in Tirana, capital of Albania. Chesshire moved soon. Davies remained for two successive operations and was then moved to Belgrade where he met Captain Victor Vercoe of the Royal Fusiliers, who had been parachuted into Yugoslavia to join Brigadier Armstrong's mission to Mihailovitch. Both of them were moved to Banica concentration camp under Gestapo control. There already was Lieutenant J. Potochnik, a Yugoslav, a wireless operator attached to the Royal Navy, and Captain H. Hawksworth RE.

They moved on to Vienna and then to Mauthausen, where by an amazing twist of fate, the
Kommandant
, Zeireis, instead of disposing of them in the normal way (the gas chamber) returned them to Vienna to a prison under
Wehrmacht
control. From here they were moved to Kaisersteinbruck and thence to Colditz.

One of the first remarks made by Brigadier Davies when he had settled down in Colditz was “You ought to build a glider here!”

On 22 August Padre Platt records that “Bets were laid on the fall of Paris.” (Paris fell on the 25th.) On 1 September he wrote:

If the best of the German soldiers in this camp are able to interpret the situation from their newspaper, and know how near the collapse of their nation's dream is, they deserve congratulation on the level demeanour they maintain, and the calm exterior they present.

Ronnie Littledale, commanding the 2nd Battalion, the King's Royal Rifle Corps, was killed on 1 September in Normandy, his jeep blown up by a land mine.

Bombers flew over the Castle again on 11 September, and Platt inferred from the resulting column of black, belching smoke that the Leuna petrol refinery was once more the target.

A week later, Cyril Lewthwaite attempted to escape on the park walk using a blanket “so adorned,” according to Platt, “with dirt and dead grass and leaves (the latter stitched to it) as to represent a heap of rubbish when he fell down and drew the blanket over him.” Unfortunately one of the guards spotted him. Platt concludes:

One of the interesting aspects of the event was that when discovered, there was none of the accustomed abuse or threatening to shoot, and Franz Josef was there!

As the autumn days of 1944 shortened and the second front in France settled down, the prisoners of Colditz gritted their teeth once more to stand another winter behind the bars, hoping for relief in the spring. The prisoner contingent now numbered 254 officers, about twenty-five other ranks and two civilians, of whom about 200 were British, the remainder French de Gaullists and a sprinkling of every other Allied nationality. An air of sadness and depression spread over the camp; the eternal optimists had little enthusiasm left for the victory that was always “next month” and “just around the corner!” They were nearly played out.

A double fence of barbed wire about eight feet high penned in the POWs during their one hour's exercise allowed in the park. About six feet inside this fence, there was another low fence of barbed wire which ran the whole way around the compound. There was a notice in the compound to the effect that anyone crossing over this inner fence would be shot by the guards without warning.

Mike Sinclair had made by this time eight unsuccessful escape attempts. He now decided to try again. His indomitable spirit could not be tamed. He would finish the war in harness, pulling his weight as an officer on active service.

This time he planned a lone and dangerous break. Surprise was the essence of it. He would repeat the escape of Pierre Mairesse Lebrun who, in 1941, had been catapulted over the barbed-wire fence in the park. Mike planned the break alone so that no other man could be blamed if a hand or foot slipped or the timing went wrong.

On 25 September Mike went down to the recreation ground and walked the well-trodden path around the perimeter inside the wire with Grismond Davies-Scourfield. In half an hour the guards had settled down. At the most vulnerable point in the wire, Mike stopped suddenly, turned and shook hands with Scourfield. “Good- bye, Grismond,” he said quietly. “It's going to be now or never.” He was ashen-pale.

In the next instant he was at the wire, climbing desperately, climbing quickly, spreadeagled in mid-air. To those nearby, his progress seemed painfully slow, yet it was fast for a man mounting those treacherous barbed strands. He had reached the top and was balanced astride the swaying wires when the Germans first saw him. They began shouting: “
Halt! Halt!
” and again, “
Halt oder ich schiesse!
(Halt or I shoot!)” came echoing down the line of sentries.

He took no notice. Freeing himself from the top strands he jumped down to the ground and stumbled at the nine-foot drop. He picked himself up as the first shot rang out. There were shouts again of “
Halt!
” and then a fourth time “
Halt! Halt!
” He was running. The hill was against him. He was not travelling fast. He dodged once, then twice, as two more shots rang out, and he ran straight for the outer wall. But the Germans had his range by now and a volley of shots spattered around him. He dodged again. He could still have turned and raised his hands. He was nearing the wall but he was tiring. Another volley echoed among the trees of the park and he fell to his knees and a gasp of horror rose from the men watching behind the wire. Then, slowly, he crumpled forward amongst the autumn leaves.

He lay still as the sentries rushed forward, swooping on their prey. He did not move when they reached him. A sentry, bending down, turned him over while another quickly opened his shirt and felt with his hand over the heart. He was dead. He had made a home-run.

About twenty shots had been fired at Sinclair as he ran to where, 150 yards away, a stream ran through a grid under a bridge formed by the park wall. Hugh Dickie and the German doctor both examined him and they concurred that a bullet had struck him in the right elbow and glanced off into his heart.

There was little remonstrance by the prisoners over the shooting. There had been fair warning. Sinclair had been shot whilst escaping.

Seven months later, the Castle was relieved and Mike would have been free—alive. That freedom would not have been of his own making, nor to his own liking. He had reached that stage in the humiliating mental revulsion of a prisoner of noble stature when, to desist from trying and to await freedom at the hands of others, would seal his own failure, scar his heart and sear his soul. His duty would have remained unfulfilled.

On 28 September Mike Sinclair was buried in the local cemetery. The burial party was not allowed to have more than ten people in it, and it was thought right that the eight members of his regiment, the King's Royal Rifle Corps, in the camp should all be part of it. Colonel Tod was there as SBO and Padre Heard officiated.

Hauptmann Püpcke and a party of nine German soldiers were present throughout the service in the cemetery chapel and the graveside committal. There were no military honors, but a Union Jack had been provided by the Germans, and a large wreath was already in the chapel.

At 1:30 p.m. a memorial service was held in the
Schloss
chapel, which the
Kommandant
had agreed to open for the occasion. “Abide with me” and “For all the saints” were the hymns chosen by Mike's closest friend, Grismond Davies-Scourfield.

After the war, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission moved Mike Sinclair to the Military Cemetery at Charlottenberg, West Berlin, in the British sector. His grave is numbered 10.L.14 and the inscription on the tombstone reads:

SINCLAIR Lieut. Albert Michael 75265 D.S.O. 2nd Battalion, Royal Rifle Corps. 25th September, 1944. Age 26. Son of Colonel Thomas Charles Sinclair of Winchester. His brother John Henry Lund Sinclair also died in Service.

I remember talking to Mike late one night. He had recently come out of solitary and we were discussing plans. Mike was weary. He sighed: “How many more times before the wheel changes? I have to go on!”

“We must carry on, Mike. We have to.” I had to go on for the sake of my sanity: if I stopped I would go mad. For Mike it was different. For him it was dedication to a duty that he had shouldered, consciously, when he became a professional soldier. His honor was as important to him as his life. A soldier must fight until he is the last man; he must be prepared to die fighting.

Today such a death as Mike's may be regarded as a historical finale, yet the fact that his action can be written down, and read and admired by many, of all ages, carries significance. Deep within the nature of the growing youth lies an instinctive urge to prove himself, and in the aging man an instinctive, self-conscious curiosity to know whether he
has
proved himself. Men must study themselves by studying others and accept or reject what that study reveals, imitate or turn away from what it implies. Human nature being what it is, the scales are weighted on the side of acceptance and imitation by the young and that way, unfortunately for the cynics, lies the hope that honor and chivalry will never die. Because of that, Mike's challenge was worthwhile.