Great Escapes (9 page)

Red Cross parcels started to filter through the system, which made life in the camps more bearable and raised morale considerably. Then in February 1941, the prisoners at Spangenburg were moved to an old fortress on the banks of the river Vistula, just outside Thorn, Poland. The fortress was damp and cold and the rations barely enough to sustain them. The reason for the transfer was given as retaliation for the alleged ill treatment of German prisoners of war in Canada. This was of course total nonsense and was just an excuse to undermine the morale and well-being of the prisoners.

As the train pulled into the station at night at Thorn, German Field Police met the prisoners with snarling Alsatian dogs, whilst searchlights lit up the area brighter than day. Surrounded by tanks, the men were marched to the fortress and deposited in the dark, damp cellars. The conditions were harsh to say the least and the chance for exercise and fresh air extremely limited. From a possible escape perspective, the fact that they were now in Poland lessened the chance of escape, because it was one of those countries of which very little was known at the time.

Airey Neave then discovered that just 3 miles from the fortress was another prisoner of war camp,
Stalag Xxa,
a camp for NCOs and other ranks. Among the inmates were a number of men from his own company who had survived Calais. Working parties from the
Stalag
came to the fortress every day and it was through them that Airey Neave gradually discovered that there was an escape committee in existence.

The fact that he knew a number of the men personally helped him to devise an escape plan. Together with Flying Officer Norman Forbes, it was intended that the two of them visited the camp dentist, a British Army officer, whose surgery adjoined the
Stalag.
They would escape from the surgery and hide in the hut occupied by warrant officers. They had already been approached with the idea and had agreed to help. The two men had obtained civilian clothes from Poles working with the work parties and the intention was that they would slip out with one of the working parties.

With the planning in place, the two men, with a number of others, were marched the 3 miles to the dentist’s surgery, which adjoined the Kommandant’s office and was opposite the main gate into the compound. The two men went into the surgery, removed their uniforms and slipped into the civilian clothes. They then picked up some bundles of wood and at a given signal walked into the
Stalag
compound whilst other prisoners engaged the guards in conversation. Once inside the compound they were taken to the warrant officers’ hut where they stayed.

The Germans soon realised that two of the inmates from the fortress were missing and immediately started searching for them outside, not realising that the two men were hiding inside the
Stalag.
For the next five days the NCOs hid the two men. The two men watched with amusement as they stood just inside the wire, watching and listening to SS men being given orders on where to search for the two escapees, not knowing that the two men were standing just literally feet away. During roll call they stayed under the beds of the warrant officers.

When it became obvious that the Germans had scaled down the search, believing the men had escaped, the two men left the compound in a work party to fill pallisasses with straw from a local farmer’s barn. As the work party filled them, the two men slipped away and hid under the straw. Two others who had been hidden in a ration truck took their places. When the work was finished the work party returned to the
Stalag
with the same number of men as went out.

The two men slipped out of the barn under cover of darkness with the intention of heading for Warsaw. There was an airfield nearby and as Forbes was a pilot, they had considered sneaking in and stealing an aircraft, but as neither of them were navigators they decided to head for Warsaw instead. The terrain consisted of thick, dark forests and rocky, rough tracks. After four days of struggling through this terrain, exhausted and hungry, the pair suddenly found themselves at a control point and were promptly arrested.

Handed over to the
Geheime Staatspolizei
(Gestapo) they were taken to their headquarters in the town of Plock. Airey Neave realised that he had a drawing of the airfield at Graudenz in his pocket, but managed to tear it up before it was found. Unfortunately he forgot about another one that he had in a matchbox, and that one they found. Airey Neave was justifiably worried as the possession of this map made him look like a spy. The interrogators immediately started to ask questions and accused him of spying for the Russians. What Neave did not know, was that the airfield at Graudenz was a bomber station and that preparations were under way for a massive bombing campaign against Russia, which was to take place two weeks later.

The two men were then taken in front of a civilian member of the Gestapo interrogation team. Dressed in a dark suit, the man had blond hair and cold, blue eyes, and spoke excellent English. He started by accusing them of working for the British Secret Service and when told that the map they had was to aid them to escape to Sweden, he screamed that they were lying. They then told him that they had received the information from three Canadian pilots who, in home-made German Luftwaffe uniforms, had been captured trying to steal an aircraft from the base at Graudenz.

Only the Germans and fellow prisoners at the camp could have known the detailed information regarding the attempted escape by the Canadians. The Gestapo decided to check the story and Neave and Forbes were thrown into a cold damp cell. They pondered their fate throughout the night, drifting in and out of sleep.

The following morning they were dragged from their cell and taken separately into interrogation rooms. Fearing the worst, Airey Neave steeled himself, but was surprised when his civilian interrogator offered him a cigarette and addressed him as
‘Herr Leutnant’.
Immediately suspicious, he listened as his interrogator told him that he too had been in the army and had been in the forefront of the attack on Poland. He had later been transferred to the Gestapo because of his ability to speak English. His attitude was almost pleasant, but then he started to press Neave for information regarding the map of the airfield and how he had managed to escape from the prison camp.

Determined not to give any information about the Polish farmer who had helped them, Neave repeated his story regarding the map and said that they had escaped from the dentist’s surgery at the camp and lived off food from the Red Cross parcels. For the time being Neave felt that he was being believed and he was returned to his cell after another two hours of questioning. Up to this point neither man had been mistreated, but the interrogators had created a sinister and threatening atmosphere throughout their questioning, leaving Neave and Forbes wondering when the interrogation would become physical.

Up until this point, there had been no training given to British soldiers on what to expect when being questioned, so this was new territory. When Neave finally escaped and joined
MI
9, he made certain that troops were given information regarding the interrogation techniques used by the Germans.

The interrogation continued for the next ten days and all the time the threat of violence continued to build. At night both men, now in separate cells, wondered whether or not they would be shot as spies, as this appeared to be the underlying implication of the questioning. Then after the tenth day they were told that they were being returned to the prison camp and that guards from the camp were coming to collect them.

On their return the Kommandant placed both men in cells deep inside the fortress and in solitary confinement. The cells had no ventilation or windows and were lit by a solitary dim electric light bulb. After spending one month in these conditions, the men were returned to the main body of the camp, but within weeks Airey Neave had been transferred to another camp
Oflag Ivc
– Colditz.

At the beginning of May 1941, Airey Neave and Norman Forbes arrived at Colditz, also known as a
Sonderlager
(Special Camp). The inmates of this infamous prison camp were deemed to be persistent escapees or enemies of the Reich. The huge castle near Leipzig, once the palace of Augustus the Strong, was an intimidating sight as it dominated the skyline of the Saxon countryside. The security in and around the castle was said by the Germans to make it impregnable, which immediately made the inmates all the more determined to prove them wrong and achieve freedom.

The only thing on the minds of most allied prisoners of war was escape. Within days of the first inmates being incarcerated each nationality had formed their own escape committees. This was not because they planned all their escapes according to their nationality, but because they were separated and imprisoned in different parts of the castle. They all co-operated with each other and helped each other in any way they could. For example Captain Van Doorninck, a Dutch officer, had once been a locksmith and was an expert in repairing instruments and watches and often did work for the German guards. Consequently they allowed him to collect a large range of tools necessary for the work, the same tools he used to fashion keys for the cell block locks and other doors.

For weeks Airey Neave observed the movements and mannerisms of the German guards. It was during one of these observations that he became aware that anyone entering the inner courtyard, where the prisoners were kept, was required to collect a numbered brass disc from the guardhouse and return it when they left. Then a visiting workman was bribed to part with his disc, however on leaving he reported to the guardhouse that he had lost it. All guards were then warned to be on the lookout for the disc or anyone presenting it.

With the obstacle of the disc overcome, the escape committee arranged for duplicates to be made in preparation for future escape attempts. One other problem arose, and that was that all the German guards carried a rifle with a fixed bayonet, and making a fake weapon would be extremely difficult. The answer, as far as he was concerned, was to try and pass himself off as a soldier on special duty. This however required him to carry a bayonet in a scabbard. Fortunately one of the other prisoners was a skilled woodcarver and fashioned him one from a bed board. He then created a buckle out of tin foil and placed it all on a cardboard belt.

Airey Neave had one advantage over most of the inmates in that he spoke German very well. The camp had a theatre in which inmates put on shows but which also gave them access to costumes, paints, dyes and props. Neave put forward a proposal that he would dress as a German corporal, using a converted Polish officer’s uniform painted with some scenery paint. The insignias were made out of cardboard and although very realistic at some distance, would not pass close scrutiny. He would take advantage of a theatrical performance, which large numbers of inmates and guards attended, and then just walk casually out of the main gate.

Everything was set and the evening performance started. Neave, dressed as a German corporal, mingled with the other guards and slipped out of a side door. Walking past the first sentry on the inner perimeter, he approached the second sentry and into the arc lights that illuminated the area. Speaking in fluent German he handed over the brass disc and told the guard that he had a message for the Kommandant from the duty officer. The guard watched Airey Neave march away then looked again at the number of the disc, then realised that the number ‘26’ was the one that had gone missing. The guard then raised his rifle and shouted ‘Halt’. The guardroom personnel were quickly called out and it was then that Airey Neave saw to his dismay that the paint on his uniform had turned bright green under the arc lights, not the field grey that it looked under normal lighting.

Bundled inside the guardroom, Airey Neave was threatened with a firing squad for insulting the German army. He was then taken to solitary confinement. The next morning he appeared in front of the Kommandant who sentenced him to one month’s solitary confinement in the town jail. He was also photographed for German Police records as a criminal. He was then taken from the castle, over a drawbridge across a dry moat and into the town jail. All the time he was being marched there, Neave was taking in the surrounding area and making a mental note of a possible escape route for future use.

That moment came on 5 January 1942 when, together with a Dutch officer by the name of Anthony Lutyen, he effected an escape. The two men, dressed in painted German officer’s uniforms with cardboard insignias attached, clambered down through a trapdoor beneath a stage, made a hole in the ceiling into a storeroom and then went down the stairs and through the guardroom. Anthony Lutyen, who spoke fluent German, chatted nonstop as the pair sauntered out of the guardroom, past the sentries and across the drawbridge. What Airey Neave did not know until after the war was that there was a police photograph of him pinned to the wall of the guardroom.

As the pair stepped out of the guardroom they were met with freezing temperatures and driving snows which, although it aided them considerably as they walked past the guards, also numbed them with cold. After walking over the drawbridge, they clambered down into the dry moat and struggled up the other side, slipping and sliding in the frozen snow. On reaching the top of the moat, they then had to clamber over a 12ft-high outer perimeter wall. Airey Neave stood on Anthony Lutyen’s shoulders and grasped the ice-covered top. With great difficulty, but aided by the urgent desire to escape, he managed to pull himself onto the top of the wall, then reaching down he grasped the hand of Lutyen and pulled him up. The pair dropped heavily onto the ground on the other side, their fall cushioned slightly by the deep snow.

Taking off the German greatcoats, they buried them as deep as they could in the snow, pulled their converted uniforms and ski caps made from blankets on, and set off through the driving snow. Their forged papers identified them as
Fremdarbeiters
(foreign workers) with permission to travel from Leipzig to Ulm.