Terry C. Treadwell - Great Escapes

TERRY TREADWELL

First published in 2008

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

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.

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7536 3

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7535 6

Original typesetting by The History Press

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 Comte 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 militarys 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 Comte 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 dont 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 OLeary 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.