Great Escapes (30 page)

Whilst they were standing outside, the truck was systematically searched, but finding nothing, the documents were returned to them and they all got back on board. As they drove down the road, Leslie noticed that the driver was sweating profusely. He explained that the reason for his concern was that the SS guards who had searched them and the truck were a detachment of the fanatical
Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler,
the personal bodyguard of Adolf Hitler.

On arriving in Namur, all the hitchhikers got off and the truck proceeded on to a small house in the centre. This was just to be a stopping-off place before they were picked up again and taken into the country. Two hours later the truck returned and took him to a large chateau outside of town and well into the country. He was told to stay within the confines of the front garden to avoid the gardener. The family, consisted of an older woman, her son and daughter and the woman’s niece, whose father was a Belgian Air Force pilot serving with the RAF.

The next day the truck returned, this time with three more passengers – two Americans and an English officer. The four men settled down into the routine of the family, and for the next three weeks entertained themselves with playing cards, listening to the BBC on the radio and having conversations with the rest of the family.

Then an old wood-burning truck appeared, driven by the same driver who had brought them to the chateau. The four men said their goodbyes and clambered aboard. As they approached the Meuse River bridge, where there was a German checkpoint, the four men got off and made their way downstream where a boat was waiting for them. They got aboard and were taken across the river, joining up with the truck on the other side.

The truck continued on the open road into France and once again the driver stopped to pick up hitchhikers. As they approached a small village, the driver suddenly slammed the brakes on, he had noticed a checkpoint. German soldiers with guns levelled at them surrounded the truck and ordered everyone out. Documents and passes were produced and for a moment they were seemingly satisfied. Then one of the German guards, who was searching the back of the truck shouted, ‘Who owns this?’ holding up a small bag. One of the Americans turned and said, ‘It’s mine’. Then he realised that he had answered in English.

Seconds later every gun in the village seemed to be pointing at them and every German expression seemed to be one of delight. They were roughly bundled into a guardhouse and told to sit on a long wooden bench. The next moment another German soldier appeared wearing the metal badge of the
Feldpolizei
(Field Police) around his neck. He searched each of them in turn thoroughly and turned up identity discs for the two Americans, at which point both Stuart Leslie and the other British pilot admitted that they were both RAF pilots. After two months of being on the run, it was all over.

After about thirty minutes a truck bearing Luftwaffe markings, accompanied by a staff car, pulled up outside the guardroom and the four airmen were unceremoniously bundled into the back with armed guards. The truck sped back along the road they had come, through Namur and into the prison just outside the town. The four were lined up against the wall and inspected by two German civilians wearing long leather coats and slouch hats. Stuart Leslie recognised them as members of the Gestapo. They were then taken to separate cells and interrogated. All four airmen stuck to giving just their number, rank and name. For the next two days the men were questioned continuously, but they remained defiant and the Germans learnt nothing.

Then the cell doors were flung open and the men ordered out into the courtyard where a Luftwaffe truck was waiting. They were taken to an airfield where they were placed in cells that were considerably more comfortable than their previous ones. Whilst there, a number of Luftwaffe officers dropped in for a ‘chat’, offering them cigarettes and coffee.

The following morning they were herded into the back of the truck again and driven away. As they passed along the airfield, Stuart Leslie was looking at rows of cottages before realising that they were in fact camouflaged hangars for fighter aircraft. The two guards in the back with them seemed oblivious to their presence and at one point Leslie thought about overpowering them and making a break for it, but realised that his companions were not up for it and so abandoned his plan.

After some hours the truck arrived in Brussels and the four men were taken to a military compound in the middle of the city. They were immediately questioned by a Luftwaffe Intelligence Officer who, after hearing them repeatedly give him their number, rank and name, warned them that he could help them no longer and that they would be handed over to the Gestapo.

Two days later three guards came and took him to the Gestapo headquarters in Brussels, a bleak, grey building surrounded by a high wall. The building was bustling with both civilians and military personnel and as he was escorted down the corridor to the cells he noted that there were a number of Belgian paramilitary men about. Entering the cell he saw a small white card on the door with a red ‘E’ marked on it.

His cellmates were, for want of a better expression, ‘a dubious bunch’. Two were German and one was Austrian, and all three had been accused of crimes that broke the German military code. One of the Germans, Tony, spoke reasonable English and explained to him the daily running of the prison. They also showed him the way prisoners communicated with each other by tapping on the pipes that ran the length of the building.

The guard in charge of the block, who was about fifty, told him that he had been a prisoner of war of the British during the First Word War. He showed Stuart Leslie a photograph of his sister who lived in New Jersey and was married to an American fighter pilot. Leslie maintained a pleasant relationship with the man because he realised that he may need him at some time.

For three weeks nothing happened, then the cell door was flung open and two guards ordered him out; they were taking him to the interrogation centre. Bundled into the back of a truck, he was surprised to see the two American pilots who had been arrested with him.

On reaching the centre, the three men were taken into a comfortably furnished room where two young men were seated. They apologised for the rough treatment they had received and offered them cigarettes. They told them that they were from the German security service and were obliged to ask them a series of questions. They then asked if they were being treated all right and not being abused in any way. The three men immediately complained that they were prisoners of war and should be treated as such. The men replied that a mistake had been made on their part and it would be rectified as soon as possible. The two men then told them that they had both been undercover working with the Resistance in helping allied airmen escape. They had infiltrated the organisation and by doing so broken it, making numerous arrests. Stuart Leslie realised that this was a ploy on their part to undermine their confidence and to try and show them that they were in control.

They were returned to their cells but two days later Stuart Leslie was taken back to the centre, this time by himself. He was taken into a sparsely furnished room where a man in the black uniform of the SD was waiting. The gloves were off. The interrogator started his questions, to which Leslie replied as he had always done – number, rank and name. For over an hour the man shouted questions at him until he realised that he was getting nowhere. One of the guards was called and Leslie was taken away, only this time he was taken to the punishment block. The cells in the block were tiny, airless boxes that were so small that it was impossible for a normal man to stand upright and so narrow that it was impossible to lie down at full stretch. There were no lights or bedding and no windows. Barely edible food was brought twice a day and shoved through a hatch in the door. A bucket was provided for all his sanitary needs.

For fifteen days, Stuart Leslie wallowed in his own mess, unable to tell night from day and slowly losing the will to resist any more. Then suddenly one night the door opened and light from a bulb in the corridor flooded in, momentarily blinding him. It was the old guard from his previous cell. Placing a finger to his lips, he whispered, ‘follow me’. He unlocked the cell next to Leslie’s and from it emerged the American, Bradley. They both looked at each other in shock at the haggard person who stood before them. The guard took them upstairs to a washroom, where they showered and shaved. He then gave them some cigarettes and a blanket and took them back to the cells, warning them not to say where they got them from.

It was a simple humanitarian gesture, but one that made a tremendous difference to both of them. They used the blanket as a mattress on the solid concrete floor as the heat from the pipes caused the airless cell to be like a sauna. Just when he thought he could take no more, the door was flung open and a guard ordered him out into the corridor to join a line of other prisoners. The prison rang with the noise of running feet and shouts and the prisoners realised that the prison was being emptied.

They were being forced out into the courtyard where a line of trucks was waiting. News filtered back through the column of prisoners that a spearhead section of the British army was forcing its way into the city and the Germans were in full retreat. The Belgian Resistance was now out in the open, fighting the Germans from the inside and causing mayhem.

As the trucks rolled through the streets of Brussels towards the railway station, Belgians lined the roads shouting obscenities at the Germans and hurling stones. On reaching the station, the scene was one of total chaos as civilian and military prisoners fought with guards, who were prodding them with bayonets and clubbing them with the butts of their rifles in an effort to get them onto the cattle trucks that were lined up.

The airmen, under the control of the
Waffen SS,
were marched to one of the trucks, where Red Cross workers handed them each a small parcel of food and other items. Once inside the truck the doors were locked and the men made themselves as comfortable as they could. Outside the noise of screams continued as the German guards fought to try and keep some semblance of order. As the day wore on the noise continued unabated. But still the train did not move, until just before dark there was a hissing sound, followed by a shrill whistle and the train lurched forward.

Disappointment showed on the faces of the forty airmen in the truck as the train gathered momentum. The train proceeded along the track for about 20 miles and then stopped, the Resistance had blown up the track. All that night the train was stopped there. In the morning it started again, only this time it was going backwards, back to Brussels. The men found out later that when the Belgian train crew had discovered that the line had been sabotaged, they had killed the fire in the engine’s boiler and disappeared. The Germans finally found them and brought them back at gunpoint in order to get the train moving.

Back in Brussels the railway system was in total chaos as the train dispatchers had gone and the remaining members of the railway were doing everything to sabotage the railway system to prevent the Germans from leaving. Whilst in the station, Stuart Leslie could see a Red Cross train parked alongside, full of German wounded. Fleets of ambulances were bringing more and more wounded to the train and it was becoming more and more obvious that the German army was in total disarray.

In the meantime the Belgian Resistance organisation were determined to stop the prison train being moved and offered to allow the Red Cross train, with the wounded aboard, to leave unmolested if they would give up the prison train. If not, they were prepared to kill everyone aboard the Red Cross train if needed to prevent the prison train from leaving. From their vantage point the airmen watched the scene of total pandemonium as the Germans fought to get through the jammed roads that led out of Brussels; staff cars jammed with luggage, half-tracks with soldiers hanging on the sides and tanks with men clambering all over them in a desperate effort to get away. The noise of guns and small arms fire could be heard in the distance getting louder by the minute.

Then they heard the railway engine getting up steam, followed by the distinctive sound of the engine being uncoupled from the rest of the train and then the sound of the engine leaving. The noise outside continued for a while longer, then suddenly silence.

Cautiously opening the door of the truck the men peered out – the Germans had gone. All the other prison trucks were empty and the only people around were not concerned with them. They discovered later that the Germans had agreed to release the prison train in exchange for safe passage for the hospital train.

As Stuart Leslie and Bradley walked into the centre of Brussels, a woman approached them and invited them into her home. There they bathed and were fed. The woman even managed to find them some clean clothes, as the ones they were wearing were indescribably filthy. Feeling refreshed the two men headed towards the British lines to welcome their rescuers.

Their ordeal was over, but the bravery and suffering of the Belgian people who helped them would live with them for the rest of their lives

When his flight leader asked Eric Noakes to ‘fly spare’ on the day after D-Day, he willingly agreed, although he had flown three missions that day and he was just about to go on leave. ‘Flying spare’ meant that when the flight took off, the ‘spare’ would go too, but he would circle the airfield just in case one of the scheduled aircraft developed a problem. If this happened, then the ‘spare’ would take its place.

After passing out from flight training school, Eric Noakes had been posted to No.245 squadron, also known as the Northern Rhodesia Squadron, flying Typhoons or ‘Tiffys’, as they became affectionately known. This was one of the most lethal ground attack aircraft around, with eight rockets mounted beneath the wings, it had the firepower of a battleship. His squadron had been one of the first aircraft across the channel on D-Day, seeking out ‘targets of opportunity’, and sweeping the roads and countryside with devastating effects on the German army.