Great Escapes

TERRY TREADWELL

First published in 2008

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire,
GL
5 2
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www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© Terry Treadwell, 2008, 2011

The right of Terry Treadwell, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN
978 0 7524 7536 3

MOBI ISBN
978 0 7524 7535 6

Original typesetting by The History Press

Acknowledgements

Introduction

ESCAPE LINES

ESCAPE STORIES

Glossary

Appendix: Types of Prison Camps

Bibliography

I would like to thank my wife Wendy for editing and proofreading the manuscript, and for her help and support throughout the writing of the book.

I would also like to thank Diana Morgan for her help and encouragement and for introducing me to a number of former escapees and evaders; Group Captain Bill Randle for allowing me to quote from his book
Blue Skies and Dark Nights,
which describes in great detail his experiences in the hands of the Comète Line; and Tom Wingham for allowing me to include the story of his experiences of being on the run from the Germans after being shot down over Holland.

Twenty years after the ‘war to end all wars’ ended, a Second World War erupted and once again Germany was the instigator. This time the war was to encompass and involve almost the entire Western world and spread to countries in the Middle and Far East. Commonwealth countries ‘rallied to the flag’, and the United States’ entry into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbour was to be one of the major turning points, but also added to the cost in human lives, which was to be incalculable.

With the German military’s
Blitzkrieg
in Europe, and the sudden collapse of allied armies, came the inevitable prisoners of war. These were, in the main, young men who had been thrust into battle and had fought with the zest that young men do, only to find themselves incarcerated behind barbed wire, under the gaze of searchlights and machine guns, manned by trigger-happy guards. These prisoners of war were taken to camps called
offizierenlager (oflags)
for officers and
stammlagers (stalags)
for other ranks, where food was short and clothing, when worn out, could not easily be replaced. It was this environment that was to spawn some of the most ingenious and audacious escapes ever devised or imagined. It also encouraged men to discover talents and bravery that they never knew they had. However, the majority of those who either evaded or escaped did so with the help of hundreds of nameless and faceless civilians, who daily risked their lives to help them.

Within days of the tragedy of Dunkirk, groups of civilians were helping soldiers to escape detection. Within months, escape organisations were beginning to be set up. The role of the Resistance fighter was highlighted by sabotage and assassinations and was an extremely dangerous position; whereas the role of a member of the escape organisations was so low profile as to appear almost non-existent – but was equally as important, and just as dangerous.

The men and women, and indeed children, who helped run the escape lines came from all walks of life – doctors, lawyers, housewives, shop assistants, farmers and labourers, covering all classes and age ranges. So efficient were these escape lines, that the Gestapo often used fluent English-speaking agents to pose as downed allied airmen in an effort to infiltrate them. The infiltrators were often very successful, as was demonstrated when the Comète Line was betrayed. The Germans arrested two-thirds of its members, over half of whom were executed. The Germans even helped some allied airmen to escape so as to penetrate and gain information about the escape lines and the helpers. But what makes a person in an occupied country, controlled by ruthless Nazis, put their life on the line on an almost daily basis in order to help someone from another country that they don’t even know? When asked, most just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Because we had to do something!’

Such was the need for absolute secrecy that some of the escape lines operated independently from the others, although they did help each other on the odd occasion. The Pat O’Leary Line was an example of this.

In France, over 29,000 people were executed by the Germans for being members of the Resistance and that figure is not included in the 40,000 that died in prisons for various other reasons. In Denmark, reprisals were carried out on the citizens by shooting five of them for every German said to have been killed by the Resistance. The Danish Resistance itself saw over 3,000 of its members killed. The proud boast of the Danish Resistance was that of all the allied airmen that were placed in their care, not one was ever captured by the Germans.

The total number of Resistance and escape organisation members killed throughout Europe will never be known, as it was impossible to keep records, and such was the necessary secrecy behind these organisations that very few people knew who was a member and who was not.

Such was the fear of the Resistance, that Field Marshal Keitel issued the infamous
Nach und Nebel Erlass
(Night and Fog Decree), which decreed that anyone suspected of opposing Nazi rule would be arrested in the dead of night and simply vanish from the face of the earth. In a rider to this decree, Keitel wrote, as an explanatory note:

If these offences are punished by imprisonment, even with hard labour for life, this will be looked upon as a sign of weakness. Efficient intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals and the population do not know of his or her fate.

Some of the escapees and evaders joined up with the local Resistance fighters and fought alongside them. One such man was Sergeant Cyril Rolfe, RAF, who, after being shot down twice, had escaped on both occasions from German prisoner of war camps. After his second capture he was being taken to Germany when he escaped and headed east towards Russia. Making his way through the German lines he joined up with Russian Cossacks and for the following ten weeks was involved in a number of cavalry charges before being repatriated to England.

1st Lt John Mead, USAAC, a B-24 pilot, was shot down during a raid and was picked up by a Maquis group. Because of the situation at the time, he found it impossible to get back, so instead he fought alongside them and eventually took over the leadership of the group, when its leader was killed in a gun battle with German forces.

Some of the atrocities suffered by captured airmen were brought before the Nuremberg trials. One particularly brutal incident concerned forty-seven British, American and Dutch aircrew. Imprisoned at Mathausen, the airmen, all barefoot, were taken into a deep stone quarry and made to carry large rocks, weighing about 60lb each, to the top of the quarry. SD
(Sicherheitsdienst)
troopers lined the route and beat the men with whips and clubs. On their second trip, the load was increased and those who fell were whipped or kicked to their feet. By the end of the day twenty-one of the men were dead, the remaining twenty-six were killed the following day.

Fifty escapees from
Stalag Luft (Luftwaffe-Stammlager) III
were murdered after they made a mass escape from the prison camp. This was in retaliation for causing the authorities huge embarrassment after the Germans had declared that the camp, full of habitual escapees, was escape proof. Most of those involved in both atrocities were later brought to account at Nuremberg and were either hanged or given life imprisonment.

Even when the news of these atrocities filtered through to the prisoner of war camps, it was not enough to stop escaping or evading airmen risking their lives in an effort to get back to England and join the fighting again. The moment they discarded their uniforms and carried forged identity and travel documents, it made them liable to be shot as spies if caught. Not one of these young men was necessarily equipped for escape and evasion, but they all felt it was their duty to get back to England.

At the end of the war it was estimated that of the Royal Air Force, forty-six officers and sixty-three other ranks had escaped from prison camps, 401 officers and 946 other ranks had successfully evaded capture. Of the Army, 106 officers and 711 other ranks had escaped from prison camps, 36 officers and 344 other ranks had successfully evaded capture. Of the Navy, ten officers and thirteen other ranks had escaped from prison camps, six officers and eight other ranks had successfully evaded capture. This, compared with just
one
German officer, Leutnant Franz von Werra, who successfully escaped from a prison camp in Canada, was a truly remarkable achievement, due to a great extent to the courage and fortitude of the citizens of the occupied countries of Europe. The reason for the small number of naval personnel becoming prisoners of war was because there were very few ever captured, as most either went down with their ships or were picked up at sea by rescue vessels.

The Americans also set up their own section of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) called MI.S-X. Unfortunately, after the war virtually all the records of this section were destroyed on the orders of Major-General George V. Strong, the Deputy Chief of Staff for G-2 (Intelligence).

For some years Britain and the rest of Europe had watched the rise of Nazism in Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Hitler had fought in the First World War as a corporal in the army and had returned to a defeated and destitute Germany. The rise of socialism in Germany gave Hitler the platform upon which to build a ruthless regime. After taking over as President and Chancellor from Otto von Hindenburg, Hitler set about rebuilding Germany’s military strength under the guise of rebuilding the country.

One or two minor acts of aggression by Hitler towards neighbouring countries were enough to make Britain and France take note of Germany’s intentions. Hitler had sent some of his troops into the Rhineland. This was in breach of the Treaty of Versailles and when France objected and asked Britain for support Britain refused to get involved. Seeing that Hitler’s act had been unopposed, the Italian dictator Mussolini saw his opportunity to make an alliance with Germany and form an ‘Axis’ around which Europe could revolve. This act of aggression caused rumblings of war to filter through Europe, and the British government started to make plans in case they became involved.