Escape
Authors: Paul Dowswell
Locked doors, high prison walls and barbed wire are formidable enough obstacles, but many escaping prisoners also face savage dogs and armed guards who shoot to kill. From Alcatraz to Devil's Island, this book tells the extraordinary tales of men who risked their lives for their freedom.
ONTENTS
People thought San Francisco's Alcatraz prison was escape-proof â Frank Morris set out to prove them wrongâ¦
In 1943, a British naval officer prepares to escape from a German prison camp. He speaks no German, but his disguise as a Bulgarian naval officer should see him throughâ¦
Soviet masterspy George Blake faces a 42 year sentence in London's Wormwood Scrubs prison. His guards thought he was a model prisoner â until he escaped.
Dapper German pilot Gunter Pluschow wends his way through World War One England, dressed as a docker in desperate need of a bath.
French resistance fighter André Devigny faces imminent execution. Beneath his mattress lies a bed-sheet rope, attached to a grappling hook made from a lamp stand. Will it be enough to get him out of Montluc prison?
Ten locked doors lie between Tim Jenkin and the outside world. But the anti-apartheid activist is determined to break out of Pretoria prison.
MUSSOLINI'S MOUNTAINTOP GETAWAY
German commandos snatch Mussolini, the deposed Italian dictator, from his Apennine jail. Is the escape plane too small to carry him?
A chilling tale from the French prison colony of Devil's Island. Escape from the camps was easy, what came after was truly terrifyingâ¦
In the 1930s Alcatraz, a tiny rocky island in San Francisco Bay, was one of the world's most notorious prisons. Known as “The Rock”, it was said to be escape proof, and was a bleak home for such notorious gangsters as “Creepy” Karpis and “Machine Gun” Kelly. Al Capone, the most famous gangster of all, traded a life of crime and luxury for the prison's dull routine, and slowly lost his mind working in the laundry room.
By the 1950s, Alcatraz had become a crumbling shadow of its former self. Its villains were no longer notorious, although they were often just as brutal. Now the island was a dumping ground for persistently troublesome prisoners who were transferred there from other jails in the American West.
Frank Morris, bankrobber and burglar, was such a man. A series of prison sentences, escapes and recapture, had led him here. He arrived in January 1960, refusing to accept that “The Rock” was escape proof. From his first moments on the island he was planning his getaway.
Morris was a gaunt, handsome man, not unlike Clint Eastwood, who would later play him in a Hollywood film. His pleasant face and quiet, amiable manner disguised a ruthless determination and razor-sharp mind.
As his first days at Alcatraz went by, Morris got used to the prison routine. There was the daily visit to the workshop to earn money making brushes or gloves. There were the routine body searches, half-hourly head counts, the two hours of “recreation” wandering around the exercise yard. Then there were the three meals a day in the prison canteen. The canteen was considered to be one of the most dangerous places in the prison. As a precaution against an outbreak of rioting, ominous rifle slits had been built into the walls, and silver tear-gas bombs nestled in the ceiling.
After the evening meal, the prisoners were locked in their cells for the night. They had four hours to themselves before lights-out at 9:00pm. Here they could paint, read, play musical instruments or whatever, all in the relative privacy of their cells. Some called out chess moves to opponents nearby, others swapped jibes and threats with prisoners they planned to attack during an afternoon exercise period.
Morris's easy manner soon made him friends. In the cell next to him was Allen West, an accordion-playing New York car thief. The two men got along well. In the canteen, where the prisoners could sit where they liked at meal times on long tables and benches, Morris also met the Anglin brothers, John and Clarence. They were burly country boys, who left behind a life as Florida farm hands for a career in bank robbery, and now they were hardened prison veterans. They had cells on the same level as Morris and West, but further down the row.
After Morris had been in Alcatraz for a year, another prisoner told him that a large fan motor had been removed from a rooftop ventilator shaft three years before. It was never replaced. Morris's sharp mind instantly pictured a daring night-time getaway through the shaft. There was a way out of “The Rock” 9m (30ft) above his head.
An escape would be difficult but not impossible. One thing was certain â it would take a great deal of time and planning. But time is the only luxury a man has during his term of imprisonment, and Morris was going to make the best of it.
The first thing Morris had to do was figure out a way of getting from a locked cell up to the roof. The men were watched closely during the time they were out of their cells, so going up there then would be impossible. But one day, inspiration struck. At the bottom of every cell, just below the sink, sat a small air vent. Behind it lay a narrow corridor carrying water, electricity and sewer pipes. If Morris could remove the vent and then make a hole big enough for him to crawl through, he would be able to climb up to the ventilator shaft and out on to the roof. At night he was left alone in his cell for a whole nine hours. This would be a perfect time to explore.
How easy would it be to make that hole? Morris stooped down and picked at the concrete around the vent with a pair of steel nail clippers. Tiny flakes fell away. The concrete could be dug out but it would take ages to do it. And making the hole wasn't the only problem. Hiding it as it got bigger was also a major consideration.
Morris decided he could order an accordion, like West's, to hide his early excavations, paying for it with money he had earned from the prison workshop. As the hole grew slowly bigger and became too big to conceal with the accordion, Morris also hit on the idea of making a false wall with a painted board, complete with a painted-on air vent.
The more Morris plotted, the more he realized an escape like this would be better made with others to help him. West and the Anglin brothers were quickly recruited. Their closeness to him in the cell block would help. The four became an escape committee, and their first move was for all of them to take up painting as a hobby. This gave them a seemingly innocent excuse to order brushes, paints and drawing boards which they could each use to make a false wall when they were needed.
While West watched out for patrolling guards from his cell next door, Morris began to chip away at the concrete with his clippers. After a slow hour he had collected a small pile of fragments, and his fingers ached terribly.
He grumbled quietly to West: “I reckon at this rate we'll still be digging by the time we come up for parole.”
“We'll have to have ourselves a little talk with the Anglins at breakfast,” said West, and the two retired to their bunks to sleep.
“Weeeellll⦔
Clarence Anglin always left a word hanging in the air, but what he said afterwards was almost always worth waiting for. West and Morris hung on to his every word.
“See this spoon? I reckon we can make ourselves a proper digging tool with this. You stick your clippers to that handle, and you get a lot more digging done.”
Morris slipped his spoon into his pocket.
“Great idea, Clarence,” he said. “And I know just how to put spoon and blade together! Catch you later⦔
That night, as other men painted, or played their instruments, Morris prepared his cell for some ingenious improvised metal work. First he broke the handle off his stolen spoon, and then removed one of the blades from his nail clippers.
“Hey Westy,” he whispered, “You got a dime?”
“Yeah, who's asking?”
“Gimme it, I'll pay you back when we break out of here! Now keep a look out for me.”
Morris began to chip off tiny slivers of silver from the dime until he had made a little pile on his table. Then he tied fifty or so matches into a tight bundle. Next he piled some books into two close towers and positioned the spoon handle and clipper blade in the gap between the books so that they were touching. Finally he carefully sprinkled the silver slivers on top of the spoon and blade.
“Anyone coming? Good. Here goes!”
WHOOOOOOSH. Morris ignited the bundle of matches beneath the handle and blade and, for a brief second or two, they were bathed in a fierce white heat, which quickly settled into a fast burning orange flame.
“Bingo!” he cried quietly to himself. Sure enough the heat had melted the silver, and fused the handle and blade together.
“What's that smell Frank? You raising the devil in there?” said West, who caught a strong whiff of burning matches.