Castle of the Eagles

by Felton, Mark;

  ‘Get down that hole,’ Pederneschi ordered the sergeant, ‘and find out where it comes out.’3 He handed the torch to the sergeant, who gingerly climbed down and disappeared.

  ‘You two, stand guard here until I relieve you,’ said Pederneschi to two of the sentries. ‘The rest of you follow me. I have to see the commandant.’

  *

  ‘They’ve found the tunnel!’ yelled Lord Ranfurly as he ran into the dining room. There was a considerable commotion out in the courtyard as Italian soldiers, bayonets fixed to their rifles, gathered outside the chapel.

  To the assembled officers it was naturally a grievous blow, but they had some housekeeping to take care of before the Italians descended mob-handed to search the POW accommodation. The buzzer that Captain Pederneschi had heard inside the tunnel was not supposed to be active, Neame having ordered Sergeant Bain to disconnect it after the escape. But somehow it had accidentally been reconnected and had since gone haywire, ringing continuously.4

  ‘Have the boys burn the dummies,’ ordered General Neame. Over the next few minutes the dummies were taken back out of the six empty beds and the heads thrust into fires in the kitchen and other rooms by the orderlies.5

  Neame glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece.

  ‘Twenty-two hours, gentlemen. We’ve given them a 22-hour head start.’ It was 6.00pm. It was an amazing achievement under the circumstances and far better than they could have hoped for. But the loss of the tunnel was a terrible blow. Plans had been afoot for another six officers to escape through it.

  *

  On receipt of the news of a tunnel from Captain Pederneschi, Commandant Tranquille ordered that a roll call of the prisoners be taken immediately, preparatory to a thorough search of the castle for contraband and escape equipment. Pederneschi was pleased – he knew that all prisoners had been accounted for at 11.00 that morning, and the sentries had reported no incidents on the walls or gates. It looked as though Pederneschi had foiled a major escape attempt. As he strode over towards the keep beside Tranquille, he had a slightly cruel smile fixed to his face.

  Second Lieutenant Solera was detailed to assemble the prisoners. He approached Neame wearing a triumphant smile, believing, like Pederneschi, that a major plot had just been foiled. ‘Do you know what Mussolini said, General?’ opined Solera proudly. ‘He said that the best general was the one who had his troops on the field fifteen minutes before his opponent.’6

  The sergeant sent down the tunnel had emerged in the lift lobby. When the officers inspected, they discovered the hole into the chapel, and the chapel piled ten feet high with spoil. It was almost inconceivable that such an excavation could have been carried out right under their noses. Guards were posted on the tunnel exit.

  At 6.30pm a head count was taken. Second Lieutenant Solera, who earlier in the day had reported all prisoners present and correct now stood to attention before the commandant. His face was flushed with embarrassment.

  ‘Well?’ asked Tranquille, his hawk face casting a balefully triumphant glance around the dining room, where Neame and the other senior officers had assembled.

  ‘Six missing, sir,’ said Solera quietly, hardly daring to look the commandant in the eye.

  ‘What!’ exploded Captain Pederneschi angrily. He then proceeded to count all of the prisoners, including the orderlies. But he soon realised that some distinctive faces were missing. When he returned to Tranquille, Pederneschi’s face was ashen.

  ‘Six are gone, Commandant.’

  ‘Who?’ spat Tranquille.

  ‘O’Connor, Carton de Wiart, Boyd, Hargest, Miles and Combe.’

  ‘Search the castle from top to bottom!’ shouted Tranquille. ‘Captain, see me in my office immediately.’

  As Pederneschi turned to follow Tranquille out of the room he caught a glimpse of General Neame’s face. It had split into a huge grin.

  *

  Owen Boyd looked at his watch in the fast disappearing light: 6.30pm. Another goods train was puffing slowly past his concealed position, a long column of black smoke billowing into the air, contrasting starkly with the brilliant white snow that gleamed in the last of the sunlight on the upper mountains. Boyd watched closely as the squeal of brakes met his ears once again, and the train ground to a halt at exactly the same position as all the others. It would be dark soon, and once the sun had set Boyd would make his move and catch the next train to make the mysterious five-minute stop. He glanced around the countryside but could see no one. It was a good sign.

  *

  After hiking all night and all of the next day, by 7.00pm Generals O’Connor and Carton de Wiart were exhausted and looking for somewhere to shelter. If anyone asked, they were simply elderly Austrian tourists enjoying a walking holiday in Northern Italy. O’Connor spotted a farmhouse in the evening twilight and decided to try his luck. He rapped on the door. It was opened by an elderly Italian peasant, who was surprised by the strange foreign visitors, but clearly also honoured by their visit. O’Connor, who spoke good conversational Italian after his many hours of dutiful study at the castle (conducted with the express purpose of aiding his escape), asked the farmer whether he could put them up for the night. The farmer showed them to his cowshed, where a few milking cows were corralled, and O’Connor and De Wiart settled themselves upon straw beside the animal stalls. They were about to break out their meagre rations when the farmer reappeared and invited them into the main house for a meal.

  The farmhouse was filled with three generations of the family, and the two escapers were treated as honoured guests. The farmer’s wife produced fresh bread and heaps of pasta, all washed down with the local red wine. The conversation was lively, with the Italians warm and boisterous.

  Suddenly, the farmhouse door was wrenched open and in stepped an Italian soldier. O’Connor immediately ceased chattering and De Wiart’s heart sank. But then the soldier smiled and was soon embracing and kissing family members. He was one of the farmer’s sons, home on leave. O’Connor ‘rose magnificently to the occasion’, remembered De Wiart, ‘broke into voluble Italian and jabbered away to the whole family as to the manner born, whilst I confined myself to eating and inwardly blessing the more studious Dick.’7

  *

  ‘Someone’s coming!’ whispered Brigadier Miles. ‘Hide!’ Moving quickly, he and Hargest burrowed down under the leaves inside the trenches where they had been resting.8 They could hear men’s voices close by. Then footsteps. The two New Zealanders barely dared to breath, screwing their eyes shut and almost gagging on the smell of musty, rotting vegetation. After a few minutes, silence returned, with just the noise of birds in the trees looking for roosts before the twilight. Hargest gingerly put up his head over the lip of his trench.

  ‘All clear, Reg,’ he whispered to Miles.

  Crawling out of their temporary hides, the two brigadiers began walking along the ridge. They had not gone far when a siren sounded, its shrill klaxon call loud enough to freeze blood. It gave Hargest and Miles a bad start, until they realised that it was probably a factory whistle down in the valley indicating the end of the working day rather than anything to do with frontier defence.9 By now, their nerves were beginning to get more than a little frayed by the cat-and-mouse game that they were playing.

  Eventually they reached the end of the woods and were confronted by a deep valley. Hargest glanced compulsively at his watch. ‘Nineteen thirty hours,’ he said to Miles, who nodded. The valley had virtually no cover whatsoever. On the other side the ground reared up into an almost vertical wooded hillside. Ominously, both men could discern rifle pits on the far side, the top of the range of hills having been cleared of vegetation.10

  ‘I’m terribly thirsty,’ said Miles. ‘I can see a water hole down the bottom.’ He pointed to where the last rays of the sun glinted off a patch of water. Neither man had any water left and they were suffering badly.11

  ‘Look over there,’ said Hargest, pointing into the distance where the occasional wooden hut could be made out
. ‘Looks like a frontier patrol.’ As Hargest and Miles watched, a column of tiny figures could be discerned marching across the Alpine landscape and meeting another orderly party.

  ‘Which mountain do you think that one is?’ asked Miles, pointing in the direction of the massive wooded hill across the valley. Hargest took out a map and examined it carefully.

  ‘I’d say it’s Olimpino. The frontier fence should run behind it.’12

  ‘Well,’ sighed Miles, ‘we’ll have to wait for dark before we try and get through those patrol areas.’13 Hargest agreed and the two men settled down to wait. Time passed slowly.

  *

  Owen Boyd glanced at the new train as it arrived. It was almost completely dark now and the train was just a darker shape moving against the valley floor. The only light came from the footplate, where the boiler fire glowed warmly. As predicted, the train slowed and then came to a halt exactly as before. Boyd didn’t hesitate. He jumped up and started down the short hillside as fast as he dared and charged up the railway tracks to the back of the train, where a single red caboose lantern glowed like a malevolent eye.

  He moved along the train to the second-to-last truck, conscious of the noise of his footsteps on the gravel beside the rails. He turned and looked behind him several times as he moved forward. Moving fast, he climbed up on to a foot rail and started fiddling with the door release. It was stuck. Boyd cursed. He knew that he had only a couple of minutes before the train started shunting forward. Up ahead towards the engine he heard someone laughing, the noise carrying on the still night air. Holding himself steady with one arm, his legs aching as he balanced on the foot rail, Boyd pulled at the door release with all his might. It gave with a harsh metallic clunk that seemed loud enough to warrant investigation from the footplate. Gingerly, he ran the door back a few inches on its rail and quickly swung inside. He pulled the door shut just as the train gave a lurch, the wheels and bogeys spinning on the shiny rails before taking the weight of the trucks. Then the train was moving, the engine settling into a steady rhythm. Boyd crouched by the door, hardly believing his luck. He’d made it.14

  *

  The first stage in the process of apprehending the escapers began soon after the discovery of the tunnel at Vincigliata Castle. All Carabinieri, army and police commands were notified of the escape by teleprinter messages, and the alert was further disseminated down to individual posts by telephone or face-to-face meetings. Steps were immediately taken to strengthen the frontier defences with Switzerland and France, and search parties mobilised to begin scouring the countryside.

  For the first time since North Africa, the Germans were involved with the senior officer prisoners. Though German forces would not move into Northern Italy in force until September, Italy was an important supply base for German forces in North Africa, meaning that there were many units in the country. The most important was Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2, which controlled several air bases and air force ground units throughout the region. Soon teleprinters at Kesselring’s headquarters and subsidiary units were chattering like machine guns as a strongly worded alert was quickly spread:

  On the evening of 29 March 1943, six captured British generals escaped from a prisoner of war camp near Florence. They speak German well. It is possible that they will try acts of sabotage during their escape and will appear in German or Italian uniforms or in civilian clothing for this purpose.15

  *

  A sea of twinkling lights across the valley transfixed Hargest and Miles. While Italy was under blackout regulations, neutral Switzerland suffered no such rules and Chiasso and its surrounding villages were brightly lit. It had been a very long time since the two New Zealanders had seen such a sight.

  By now, their desperate thirst had driven the brigadiers from their lofty perch and down into the darkened valley in search of water. When they arrived at the water hole, Miles took out his enamel mug and dipped it in. ‘When he raised it,’ Hargest recalled, ‘something scrambled out – a frog! The hole was stagnant.’16 They were now in an exposed position, making a lot of noise stumbling through the rocky valley floor and well lit by the lights of Chiasso.

  ‘We won’t avoid detection for long in this light and quiet,’ whispered Miles fearfully. ‘Let us go back to the trenches and hope for better luck tomorrow.’

  ‘But we agreed to go on,’ replied Hargest. ‘Besides, we can’t hang on for another day without water.’ They agreed to continue. The only water that was to be had was small puddles formed in animal footprints – the two brigadiers pressed their faces into the mud and sucked up this stagnant water gratefully.17

  *

  O’Connor and De Wiart wandered back to the farmer’s cowshed tired, stomachs full of good home-cooked food and pleasantly mellow after several glasses of wine. They crashed out on the soft straw. De Wiart’s badly blistered toe was hurting, but he tried to push it out of his mind.

  ‘You know, Carton, I haven’t worked out exactly how far we’ve walked,’ said O’Connor, tugging a map out of his rucksack. After contemplating it for some time he looked up.

  ‘I reckon we’ve covered 33 miles, or thereabouts,’ announced O’Connor.18

  ‘Damned good show! And more so as we are lugging these blessed things about,’ said De Wiart, pointing with one boot at his 25lb rucksack.

  If they could keep up this kind of pace they should make the Swiss frontier in about seven days.

  *

  Aboard the goods train, everything was going to plan. Boyd crouched in the dark, the train steaming along slowly as it headed for the frontier. But suddenly Boyd felt the train begin to slow down once more. With much squealing and juddering the train came to a stop. Boyd’s mind was a riot of emotions: perhaps they would now check the wagons at the frontier – if that was the case he was sunk. Then, with another jolt, the train started to shunt backwards! He could feel it change direction on the track before it came to another halt. It felt as though the train had backed into a siding.19

  Boyd’s ears strained to hear what was going on outside. There were some metallic clanking sounds and bumps, followed by silence. Then the train started up again, moving off noisily in the direction of Switzerland – the problem was Boyd’s wagon didn’t move. He realised with growing horror that his part of the train had been uncoupled and left in a siding.20 He cursed his bad luck. The frontier was only a few hundred yards away.

  Boyd remained crouched beside the door trying to decide what to do. Perhaps the next train along would pick up the uncoupled wagons; or perhaps they would be left on the siding all night. He was trapped like a rat in a barrel if any checks were carried out on the wagons. For the time being, he decided to wait. He would see what happened before attempting anything drastic.

  *

  ‘Christ!’ hissed Hargest, flattening himself against the snowy hillside. Reg Miles dived down beside him. Hargest pointed ahead in the darkness. There was a sentry box. The two brigadiers had almost blundered into it in their exhaustion.

  ‘Wait here, I’ll have a look,’ whispered Hargest, before setting off, bent double. He skirted around the box, but couldn’t see a sentry. It was deserted. Hargest walked over and peeked inside. Empty.21

  The two brigadiers sat on their haunches for a few minutes, trying to get their bearings in the darkness. According to their understanding, the frontier was on the other side of the hill upon which they sat. Hargest looked up the steep incline. There was something ahead, some distance behind the sentry box. They moved forward to examine it. A large pole was cemented into the ground. ‘I lay and looked upward to get a view against the light of the sky,’ wrote Hargest. ‘At once it dawned on me – this was the frontier.’22 It was a stout fence, twelve feet high, angled on the steep hillside. The top was hung with bells, which any vibration would set off.23 Hargest reached out and gently shook the fence. The bells jangled loudly.

  Hargest turned to Miles, who was staring transfixed at the obstacle, as if in a daze. ‘Quick,’ whis
pered Hargest, ‘give me the wire cutters.’24

  *

  Air Vice-Marshal Boyd had made up his mind. Simply sitting inside a freight wagon in the hope that something positive may eventually happen was not his style. A man of action, Boyd had decided that if he was going to cross the frontier, he would have to do it himself. The train gambit had failed, so it was up to him to find an alternative way, whether that be jumping another train or emulating Hargest and Miles and walking out of Italy. The longer he spent inside the goods wagon, the greater the chance of discovery and capture.

  Gingerly, Boyd slid the wagon door back a couple of inches and peered outside. Everything appeared quiet. Pushing the door back further on its rails, Boyd slid gently out and placed a foot on the step. Once fully out, he carefully slid the door back into place and locked it. Then he jumped down to the ground and crouched. He could detect no movement. Boyd stood up, and carrying his suitcase in one hand, he started to walk away. Suddenly, a torch was switched on, illuminating him. For a second he considered running, but the sentry’s challenge in Italian made it clear that the man was armed.25

  Boyd stood still, raising his arms above his head. The sentry approached, his boots crunching along the side of the railway track until he was only a few feet from Boyd. He pointed his rifle at Boyd, then asked him in Italian: ‘Are you a British general?’26

  Boyd was astonished. Clearly, the Italians had discovered the escapers’ absence from the castle and had flashed an alert to all their police and military forces. Boyd sighed deeply and slowly nodded. He was only a quarter of a mile from the Swiss frontier.

  *

  Reg Miles fumbled in his bag for a pair of wire cutters that he had fortuitously liberated from a workman at the castle some weeks before. Jim Hargest waited impatiently by the fence until Miles had retrieved the cutters. Grasping the fence, Hargest pulled it as tight as he could to prevent it vibrating and setting off the row of bells mounted along its top. Miles came forward and dropped to his knees before the fence. Each man looked both ways along the length of the barrier. Hargest nodded and Miles positioned the jaws of the cutters over the first piece of wire. Then he squeezed. The stout wire suddenly parted with a loud click.27 At that moment, it was the finest sound in the world.