Great Escapes (3 page)

Situated over 300km from the nearest border of a neutral country, the camp was filled with notorious and persistent escapees. Almost all of the inmates had made three or more escape attempts from other camps and were considered to be a dangerous nuisance by the Germans. The boast by the Germans that the camp was escape proof only gave the inmates more of an incentive to prove them wrong. At one point the camp was visited by Reichsmarschall Herman Goering, who, after being escorted around the camp, declared it to be the most secure of all prisoner of war camps. This was a statement he was to regret making as within months a number of escapes had been made. It was also said that Leutnant Franz von Werra, the only German to successfully escape from an allied prisoner of war camp, visited Colditz to advise on security.

With the debacle of Dunkirk well under way, troops were attempting to make their way back after finding themselves behind enemy lines. Among some of these were RAF pilots who had been shot down and then joined the thousands on the beaches waiting to be rescued. Others, finding the roads jammed with fleeing troops and civilians, decided to head across country and find other ways of getting back to England.

Aircrew who were shot down over Germany found themselves being hunted not only by the military, but also by the local people who would, on some occasions, capture and then lynch them. Heinrich Himmler actually issued a directive to the local police, saying that they were not to interfere with the justice being carried out on the
‘Terrorfliegers’
by local people. On the Eastern Front the SS units took no prisoners and anyone captured was immediately shot.

From the beginning of the war, allied soldiers, sailors and airmen were told that it was their duty to try and escape. In the event of their being captured, it was incumbent upon them to put the enemy to great inconvenience, both in time and manpower, in keeping them incarcerated. The prisoner of war camps themselves were not the most pleasant of places and some of the guards were chosen for their harsh attitudes. In Italy and Japan the vast majority of the guards were just brutal thugs selected for the task. In Germany, however, the majority of German guards were relatively reasonable and the majority of Kommandants were elderly officers who had been recalled to service to release younger men to fight.

It became the responsibility of the International Red Cross to look after the welfare of prisoners of war irrespective of nationality. The beginnings of the organisation began as a result of strong representations by Florence Nightingale and others after the Crimea War. She had complained loudly about the inhumane treatment suffered by the sick and wounded. Her cause was helped by the publication of a book by Jean Henri Dunant in Switzerland called
Un Souvenir de Solférino,
which gave an account of the victims of the war. Dunant had witnessed the sight of thousands of wounded men lying helpless and abandoned after the Battle of Solferino and decided to try and do something about it. In 1863 he invited twelve European countries to send representatives to Switzerland to attend a diplomatic conference. This resulted in the first Red Cross convention in Geneva where the twelve European countries decided to lay down the rules of war concerning the treatment of the wounded. In 1864 the Geneva Convention, as it became known, came into being. In 1906 the rules were revised to include the treatment of prisoners of war and, in 1946, further revised to include the civilian population, which included members of organised resistance groups.

There were four Geneva Conventions at the time; they covered the sick and wounded, armed forces on land and sea, prisoners of war and civilians. With regard to the rights of prisoners of war under the rules of the Geneva Convention, they were as follows:

Prisoners should be:

Treated humanely with respect for their persons and honour.

Allowed to inform their next of kin and the Red Cross.

Allowed to correspond with relatives and receive relief parcels.

Allowed to keep their clothes and personal effects.

Given adequate food and clothing.

Provided with quarters not inferior to those of their captors.

Given medical care as and when their state of health requires.

Paid for any work they do for their captors.

Repatriated if their medical condition is such that they would no longer be able to resume active service.

To be released the moment hostilities cease or as soon as practicable.

Prisoners must not:

Be compelled to give any other information other than their name, age, rank and service serial number.

Be deprived of any monies or valuables without a receipt.

Given any special privileges except for reasons of health, sex, age, military rank or professional qualifications.

Held in close confinement except for breaches of the law or security reasons.

Forced to carry out military work, work that is dangerous, degrading or unhealthy.

The Geneva Convention was put in place to try and prevent brutality and inhuman treatment of prisoners, and was usually monitored by the Swiss, who were neutral. Unfortunately the Japanese and some of the Italian guards had never read (or in some cases, even heard of) the Geneva Convention, or just simply chose to ignore it. Under the rules of the convention it was perfectly legal for prisoners of war to try and effect an escape, but although the Germans had signed up to the convention, they had a different interpretation of the escaping clause. They held that if the enemy had spared your life and accepted your surrender you had no right to attempt to fight again. If you were placed in a hospital because of injuries you had received, and had been treated humanely by your enemy, it compounded the offence if you tried to escape.

One of the methods put forward for getting escape kits to prisoners was to place them in Red Cross parcels. Colonel Norman Crockatt, Head of
MI
9, fought against this very successfully, arguing that if the Germans found the escape kits they would confiscate not only them, but also the Red Cross parcels. The fact that food and medicines were in desperately short supply placed the health of the prisoners at great risk. This was highlighted by a number of Russian prisoners who died from malnutrition when their Red Cross parcel supply was cut off.

Time behind the wire could be used beneficially by learning new skills and languages, but in some camps, with the exception of officers and senior NCOs, prisoners were sent to work in factories and on farms, which left little time for study. Amongst the most popular languages to learn were French and German – for obvious reasons. Another use of time was seen in the development of theatres, which enabled the prisoners to put on shows. This also gave the prisoners access to materials for props and costumes, which were also utilised in the making of civilian clothes and in some cases German uniforms.

In all prisoner of war camps escape committees were formed, utilising all the civilian skills that the soldiers, sailors and airmen brought with them.

Being on the run in the spring or summer was preferable to the winter, as raw vegetables and fruit were quite plentiful to forage, and moving around in the countryside was considerably easier. It also had to be remembered that not all the local people were friendly toward the allies. The fear instilled in them by the Germans if they aided an escapee or evader was enough to deter all but the brave. These people faced torture and death if discovered, but the real number of the many unknown and faceless people in the occupied countries, who daily put their lives on the line, will never be known.

In December 1941,
MI
6 had created a special section called
MI
9. It was staffed by some former escapees and evaders with the aim of aiding the escape organisations in occupied Europe and the escapees. The department was in two sections,
MI
9a and
MI
9b; ‘a’ was concerned with helping allied escapees and evaders, whilst ‘b’ dealt with captured enemy agents and servicemen.

Placed under the overall command of Major (later Colonel) Norman Crockatt,
MI
9’s headquarters were located at a secret location in Beaconsfield, but they also had offices in the War Office which were just known as ‘Room 900 War Office’. Norman Crockatt was the ideal person to head the organisation – he had fought in the front line of a number of major offensives and had been wounded several times. He was also a good judge of men, an effective organiser and, more importantly, he had no respect for red tape, as many a department head was to find out.

Colonel Crockatt concerned himself with department ‘a’ and placed a Major A.R. Rawlinson in charge of department ‘b’. The whole of
MI
9 came under the umbrella of military intelligence, but Crockatt saw his role as helping to facilitate the escape of British prisoner of wars and aiding their return to the United Kingdom. By doing this he would not only bring back men ready to fight again, but would also secure vital information about the enemy. This would have the additional benefit of helping raise the morale of the troops held in prison camps when they heard of successful ‘home runs’.

MI
9 helped fund the escape lines that were operating in Europe and developed a large range of aids that could be concealed in everyday objects and sent to men in the prison camps by means of the international postal service. Items included compasses hidden in the tops of fountain pens, and playing cards which when soaked in water displayed a map of Germany and its surrounding borders.

A school was set up in Highgate, London, where Intelligence Officers (IO) from the Army, Navy and Air Force could go to learn about escape and evasion techniques from men who had actually escaped or evaded and had managed to make their way home. Armed with this information the IOs would return to their respective services and pass on what they had learned to their men.

Airey Neave had been recruited by
MI
9 and was the ideal person to give lectures on escape and evasion as he had escaped from Colditz Castle, the so-called escape-proof prisoner of war camp. It was important to learn that the everyday habits of escapees and evaders might betray them. For example, smoking English or American cigarettes, or eating chocolate in public places was something very few people had even seen in wartime Europe. Even placing a knife and fork together in the English way when finishing a meal, was likely to get an escapee or evader caught. If travelling by bicycle it was essential to remember to cycle on the right-hand side of the road. Escape packs, which contained foreign money, silk maps of Europe, hacksaws, bottles of water, compasses, chocolate and even a fishing line, were devised by
MI
9 and issued to airmen and commandos.

Interrogation methods used by the Germans when questioning escapees or evaders were an aspect of this school’s curriculum. The planting of English-speaking Germans amongst prisoners was one ploy used by the Gestapo on a regular basis, so the need to be wary of your companions until you knew them better was highlighted. Questioning under the threat of violence, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement in windowless and airless cells and torture were amongst the many subjects examined.

As more and more escapees and evaders managed to return, so more and more important information filtered through to
MI
9. Norman Crockatt gradually increased his staff using experienced servicemen, all of whom had seen action at first hand, to interview the escapees and evaders when they returned.

Throughout the war, and indeed for some time afterwards,
MI
9 looked after the needs of the returning airmen to the best of their ability and were responsible for the saving of many lives. They also lent financial, physical and moral support to those faceless people who ran the escape lines throughout Europe.

After the war Airey Neave was appointed Chief Commissioner for Criminal Organisations. Together with
MI
9, he and his team were instrumental in bringing many members of the Gestapo, Abwehr, SS (
Schutzstaffel
) and SD (
Sicherheitsdienst
), as well as traitors, to the attention of the authorities for their mistreatment, torture and murder of allied servicemen and members of the various escape organisations.

The Comète Line was an escape network that was set up in Belgium during the Second World War to aid escaping and evading allied soldiers and airmen by helping them return to England. At the outbreak of war, the German army quickly overran Belgium, France and the Netherlands. In Belgium, the King surrendered his army even though the consensus was to continue to fight. With their armed forces disarmed and imprisoned, some of the civilian population took it upon themselves to create a resistance organisation.

Although it was known as an organisation, the Comète Line was in fact more like a structure of many parts, because the majority of the people concerned in its make-up never knew each other. Such was the secrecy required that it was necessary that no one person would ever know the full extent of the structure. Initially the escape line formed part of the humanitarian section of the Resistance, when Belgians visited the hospitals where hundreds of allied soldiers were being treated after becoming injured during the fighting. The retreating allied army had left these troops behind because, for a variety of reasons, they didn’t have the facilities to take them with them. When the captured troops had recovered, they were taken to prisoner of war camps in an area east of the German Reich. There were also hundreds of captured soldiers that were being transported to these camps, and because they were only lightly guarded, a number managed to slip away from their captors.

Hidden and helped by local townspeople and farmers, those who escaped found themselves with a restricted type of freedom, but with no opportunity of getting home to England. It soon became obvious that those troops that were being hidden by local people could not be hidden indefinitely. The penalty for those found harbouring or helping allied troops was torture or death and in some cases both. The decision was made to make arrangements to start moving the evaders, and in Brussels Baron Jacques Donny started to organise safe houses to where allied troops could be moved prior to be taken through Belgium. In addition to finding safe houses, forged travel and identity documents had to be obtained before the men could travel. The plans were to take the evaders by train to France and from there over the Pyrenees and into Spain.