Brickhill, like many others, was shocked and saddened by the sixty-year-old’s unexpected death. There was so much that Brickhill had wanted to say to his old friend, and thank him for. Less than two years later, when he read in the Sydney press that American actor and author Elaine Dundy was in Sydney seeking out people who had known Finch, for a biography she was writing about him, Brickhill threw off the recluse’s cloak and made contact with her, inviting Dundy to visit his Balmoral ‘cave’.
The pair spent a memorable morning reminiscing together, for Dundy had known and worked with Finch. Not long after, when a British TV crew came to Sydney filming a segment on the Australian actor for a documentary series, Brickhill similarly invited them in, so that he could record his memories of, and gratitude to, his friend.
By 1978, Brickhill had given up hope of becoming a screenwriter. ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he said to himself, ‘you’re not going to make it.’320 After John Sturges had successfully returned to World War Two with 1976’s The Eagle Has Landed, based on Jack Higgins’ bestselling novel, Brickhill had realised that Hollywood was a closed club, and he was nothing more than a beggar at the servants’ entrance. This realisation sent him descending back into the depths of depression.
A year later, he picked himself up and went back to the biographical format that had served him so well thirty years earlier, pulling out his Johnny Dodge notes and starting work on a Dodge biography. He’d known much of Dodge’s story for years – the Dodger had opened up to him during their Mediterranean sailing holiday together. To fill in the gaps, Brickhill now wrote to Dodge’s family in Britain, who gladly helped. He then began bashing out a manuscript.
It was slow work. Much slower, and harder, than during his heyday. But it gave him enormous pleasure to be creating again. By March 1981, he had completed eighty per cent of the book – enough to agree to an interview about it with Liz Porter of Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph. She visited him at the Balmoral flat for the interview, and was blown away by the fabulous views from his picture window.
Brickhill had bags under his eyes and looked a weary old man, but he was cheery, talking quickly and with enthusiasm. Still remembering the savaging he’d taken at the hands of the Daily Telegraph back in 1969 when he’d run off at the mouth on various subjects, he tried to keep the interview focused on Johnny Dodge’s story. He only talked about himself to explain his role in the Great Escape and his long-term lack of productivity.
‘Largely because of ill health, I haven’t written anything of substance for years.’ His creativity had been crippled by that ill health for twenty-six years, he said. ‘By the time Reach for the Sky came out in 1954, I was coming apart at the seams.’
A Telegraph photographer snapped a shot to accompany Porter’s article, showing Brickhill looking rather childlike as he played, at the photographer’s behest, with a model Lancaster bomber. But Porter’s article would paint a glowing picture. She went away from the Balmoral flat convinced that Brickhill had the makings of a new bestseller, and would open her subsequent article by declaring that Brickhill was about to make a literary comeback with a book ‘even more thrilling than The Great Escape’.321
Her acclaim would prove to be a little premature.
28.
The Final Chapter
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD journalist David Langsam stood looking at the bland red-brick block at 6 Wyargine Street. Was this really where the famous Paul Brickhill lived? From the street, it looked just two floors high. But on the harbour-side, five storeys tucked into the steep hill, with the ground floor sitting beside the golden sands of little Edwards Beach. Langsam had contacted Brickhill, requesting an interview. He would learn from the man himself that it was the fact he’d learned to fly in a Tiger Moth, as Brickhill had, that won him an invitation to the Balmoral flat. Reach for the Sky had inspired Langsam to fly, just as it’d inspired him to skip school in England to see Douglas Bader at one of his public appearances.
Climbing the concrete steps to the top-floor balcony, Langsam walked to the door to flat 53, and rang the bell. A figure appeared on the other side of the door’s rippled glass. A portly man in thongs, shorts and open shirt opened the door. His moustache was grey, his face flushed. It was April 1982, and this was Paul Brickhill, looking all of his sixty-five years. Inviting Langsam in, Brickhill ushered him past the small kitchen to a living room just large enough for a dining setting and two winged-back, fabric-covered chairs facing each other beside a large picture window.
Langsam didn’t know it, but the view from Brickhill’s flat was reminiscent of that from ‘Craig Rossie’. The beach sat immediately in front, complete with palm trees under the window. Rippling blue water extended as far as the eye could see – in this case, Middle Harbour and North Harbour stretching to Sydney’s heads, and the Tasman Sea beyond. Topless bathers lay blithely on the sand below. Yachts lazed in sheltered coves. In the distance, green-hulled Manly ferries charged through the rolling ocean swell with the urgency of corvettes on convoy duty.
Brickhill credited this view with keeping him sane. ‘If I had a unit,’ he said to Langsam, ‘say, in some side street in Gladesville or wherever, I would have gone around the twist years ago.’
Sitting in his armchair by the window, throughout their long chat Brickhill chain-smoked Summit Lights and drank Tab cola from a glass. By this time having recognised that he had a drinking problem, Brickhill no longer kept alcohol in the flat, and only drank when occasionally catching up with an old flying chum.
As Brickhill spoke quickly but quietly, skipping from one subject to another, Langsam found him conversant with current affairs. Politics, though, held little interest for Brickhill. Neither did the books of other authors. A bookshelf in the flat was lined with foreign editions of his own books in twenty languages, and a statuette of Greco-Roman god Pan presented by Pan Books for his 1956 Dam Busters million-seller.
On a coffee table lay a copy of Vogue magazine, with Brickhill’s daughter, Tempe, on the cover. After graduating from the NSW Conservatorium of Music, majoring in piano, Tempe had studied stage management at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before following her mother into modelling. There was no decoration in the flat’s main room; the walls were starkly bare, like a hospital ward, or a prison cell.
Brickhill had only given three interviews in thirteen years – to Dundy, the British TV crew and Porter. He’d treated those as duties. Relaxing with Langsam, he opened up about his life and his ‘horrors’. He confessed that even the slightest stress now floored him, and he expressed sympathy for former South Australian Premier Don Dunstan, who’d recently been diagnosed with stress disorder. Brickhill reckoned that, personally, he’d suffered a nervous breakdown in England and had never fully recovered since.
He also spoke of losing his religious faith following his divorce. ‘The requirement to believe a literal interpretation of Christian folklore turned me away from the church and filled my newfound belief with guilt,’ he confessed to Langsam.
Six years back, a book had come to him in the mail. Blueprint was a semi-religious school text with exercises on comprehension and creative writing. Brickhill never revealed who sent him the book – it may have been George Harsh, who became quite religious in his later years. Brickhill was much influenced by a poem by Sydney Carter in a section of the book that dealt with Jesus Christ. In fact, Brickhill said that it changed his life. Entitled Anonymous, Carter’s poem condemned the Christian cult of personality. The poem told Brickhill that he was not alone in holding doubts. Taking up the Bible again, he’d used his talent for research to delve into the historical realities of its contents, a task that absorbed much of his time.
As Langsam quizzed him about his youth, Brickhill spoke of his childhood stutter. As they talked, the stutter returned, on just two words: Greenwich Point, a place which had meant so much to him. Although he spoke freely about the writing of his bestsellers, Brickhill wouldn’t talk about The Deadline. As for new books, he said that for twenty-
five years he’d been a literary cripple. ‘Sometimes I would have a clear day and I’d be able to write a letter. But to structure a book and get down to it – impossible.’
When Langsam asked him what he was currently working on, Brickhill said he had a book eighty per cent written, but declined to go into detail. It was the Dodge biography, which had lain untouched since the Porter article. Porter’s faith in him and the book had engendered massive self-doubt in Brickhill, and he’d set it aside to devote himself to answering his vast backlog of letters and fan mail which continued to roll in.
Yet, he told Langsam, he looked forward to completing the latest book, and was confident it would find a market. ‘I’m determined to finish the job,’ he assured the journalist. ‘Properly.’
It would take him a while, he conceded. While he reckoned his mental health was now sound, physically he was declining, with his swims and walks less frequent than before. Still, he remained upbeat as he escorted Langsam to the door. As they parted, he grinned, and, wagging the index finger of his left hand at him, reminded Langsam to confine his article to the facts: ‘Now, mind, no line-shooting. Alright?’322
Six years later, Superman actor Christopher Reeve produced and starred in The Great Escape II: The Untold Story, a fictional four-hour NBC mini-series in which Johnny Dodge returned to Germany after the war to track down those responsible for executing the Fifty. Donald Pleasence was among the cast, this time playing a Gestapo man. Initially, Brickhill encouraged and advised Reeve, but as he learned more about what he was doing with Dodge, he was horrified.
‘I fear they may use my name,’ Brickhill wrote to Dodge’s son Tony. ‘Johnny would have been mortified.’ He asked for his name to be removed from the credits.323
On the night of Tuesday, 23 April 1991, Paul Brickhill’s heart gave out. He was seventy-four years of age. By the time of his death, debilitating back pain had forced him to give up swimming and walking. A battery-powered back brace had given him some relief. He died comfortably well off, lonely and unfulfilled. He never did submit the Dodge biography for publication.
From London to New York he rated brief obituaries. London’s Times declared that he ‘set a standard in the telling of popular war stories which has never been surpassed’.324 The local press noted his passing, with only the Australian hinting at his later tormented years, headlining its obituary with ‘War Writer’s Ambition Unfulfilled’, and quoting former Sun colleague Lionel Hudson, who recalled Brickhill’s ambition to write the great Australian novel.325
Brickhill’s children became the beneficiaries of his literary estate. After graduating from the University of Sydney, son Timothy worked in the UK. Later, he settled in New Zealand, land of his birth. In the 1990s, Tempe Brickhill became chief of the London operations of Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, before moving to Paris in 2010 to become CEO of Issey Miyake Europe and a director of the prestigious Fédération Française de la Couture.
29.
Upon Reflection
MANY BOOKS HAVE been written, and are still being written, in attempts to cash in on, or improve on, the products of Paul Brickhill’s golden productive years of 1949–54. As if jealous of his enormous success, many others who have written about the same subjects have given Brickhill little or no mention, or credit. Few of these authors have shared Brickhill’s insider experience or pain. Most have lacked Brickhill’s focus on ‘the guts’ of a tale, and his skill to engineer a book that worked like an intricate self-propelled machine. None have possessed Brickhill’s nose for a good story, his eye for detail, or his ear for humour. These skills were innate, born of a sensitive, stuttering child who could feel the pain of a lonely boy walking a dog around the streets of Greenwich Point. Skills which equipped him to construct tragedies that still leave the reader transported, inspired, uplifted. Brickhill made it look simple. It wasn’t.
Many successful writers are unaware of their own formula for creating literary or screen gold, and are unable to replicate early successes. Similarly, when Brickhill attempted to emulate his novelist friends Jon Cleary and Morris West, his lone published novel contained a tolerably good story but lacked his earlier fascinating detail, the humour that had sustained desperate men in dark times, or the tragedy and sacrifice that had come hand in hand with victory in his nonfiction.
Brickhill himself felt that Reach for the Sky was his best work. In writing that biography, he’d discovered an additional string to his bow, the ability to show what made a man tick. From that springboard, he could have had a career writing illuminating biographies. Late in life he returned to the genre with his Johnny Dodge book, which was never published. Times had changed. Heroes were no longer in demand. The age of the antihero had arrived, just as it would in turn be overtaken in popular culture by the age of the superhero. Besides, Johnny had been dead for years by that stage, and there was no opportunity for Brickhill to spend eight months in combative but revealing interrogation of his subject, as he’d done with the juicily flawed Douglas Bader. After those draining Bader interviews, Brickhill had declared he’d never do that again; and he didn’t.
Another factor would influence Brickhill’s writing career. It is impossible to divorce a writer’s personal life from their creative life. Each influences the other. Paul Brickhill’s divorce ended his creative life, despite numerous attempts to subsequently kickstart it. Without the support of his mother, father and wife, he lacked the even emotional keel he so needed. There is no doubt that Margot was his muse. Emotionally, during their marriage Margot and Paul come across as children posing as adults. When she was happy, he was happy, and produced his best work. He never married again, never found a new muse.
How then, after a space of more than sixty years, should we view Brickhill’s work? All his books were born of different motives. Escape to Danger and Escape or Die were written essentially to please others. The Great Escape was a conscious attempt to honour the Fifty, and to create a full-time writing career. The Dam Busters was a means of maintaining employment as a full-time author. All were written quickly. Reach for the Sky was a much more studied work, an anxious entree into the world of the biographer, even though, following lengthy research, it too was relatively swiftly written.
Brickhill never consciously set out to create heroes. That was the by-product of his quest for central figures around which to build his narratives. And a product of the times. Michael Anderson, director of the screen version of The Dam Busters, explained the success of that movie with the view that, in 1955, the British public was in need of heroes.326 Sixty years later, Australian critic Peter Craven recalled avidly reading Winston Churchill’s history of the war along with Reach for the Sky and The Great Escape as he transitioned from King Arthur and Robin Hood to ‘the remembered heroisms of the war’.327 Such was the impact upon several generations of the hero Churchill, and the hero maker Brickhill.
Were the men and events that Brickhill wrote about truly heroic? British commentator Sinclair McKay said in 2013 that The Great Escape is now woven into Britain’s cultural tapestry.328 Yet this is a work embodying distortions and misrepresentations. It may have been a great escape, but it wasn’t the greatest. The escape of 359 Japanese POWs from the Cowra camp in New South Wales was much larger. (All were subsequently killed or recaptured.) The greatest escape was the successful break by hundreds of American officers from Oflag 64 at Schubin in early 1945. And the Great Escape’s three home runs were equalled by 1943’s wooden-horse escape. Meanwhile, the Great Escape’s tunnelling techniques, equipment and X Organisation departments such as forgery and tailoring were pioneered a year earlier at Schubin for the thirty-four-man Asselin tunnel escape.
Brickhill failed to tell his readers that half Stalag Luft 3’s North Compound inmates wanted nothing to do with the mass escape, while many others had to be press-ganged into involvement. Brickhill estimated that five million Germans, directly and indirectly, were diverted from other duties to the search for the Stalag Luft 3 escapees. It’s a fig
ure without foundation, yet it’s often been quoted over the years to justify the escape, its high cost in lives and its paltry success. A decade ago, British TV claimed 100,000 German troops were diverted to search for the escapees.329 There is no proof of that claim, either.
The indications are that very few Germans devoted their sole energies to the search for the escapees. Most of the police, troops, home guard, farmers and Hitler Youth involved were already on the lookout for escaped forced labourers, German military deserters and the numerous downed Allied aircrew then falling to earth all over Germany.
In terms of tying up the military machine in Germany and contributing to the defeat of the Nazis, the Great Escape had negligible, if any, effect. George Harsh never changed his view. In 1971, he said, ‘I do not believe that what we did affected the eventual outcome of the war by so much as one tittle.’ More than that, he was critical of the escape. ‘I consider the Great Escape to have been an act of typical military madness, a futile, empty gesture and a needless sacrifice of fifty lives.’330 Said Jimmy James, thirty-ninth man out of Harry: ‘It seemed a high price to pay – three men gained their freedom and fifty were murdered.’331 Les Brodrick, escapee number fifty-two: ‘Was it worth it? No, with fifty men dead, I don’t think so.’332
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