Contents
Introduction
Breakout from the Bastille
“From here there is no escape...”
Through Traitor’s Gate
Fugitives in Iran
Falling from the Sky
Under Siege
The Gladiator War
Over the Wall
Slaves of the Sahara
Tickets to Freedom
Sources
Index
About the Author
Introduction
Struggles for Freedom
A SLAVE, CHAINS ON HER ANKLES AND WRISTS, is tugged to the auction block. A man sent to prison for his beliefs watches his guard close the cell door and fears that he has seen daylight for the last time. A soldier, hands on his head, is marched at gunpoint through the grim gates of his enemy’s prisoner of war camp.
All very different people, from different times and places, and all dreaming of the same thing —
Escape!
It’s an impulse every human being feels when trapped. No one is willingly confined, and every captive dreams of freedom. A special few will act on this slim hope.
Men and women have used their wits and courage to escape from all sorts of threats: from slave owners, from dungeons, from enemy armies, from physical danger. They may be fleeing jailers or governments. Some have been shut in by four walls, while other prisons are the kind you can’t touch, but which trap people alive — in slavery or oppression.
The greater the obstacles to be overcome, the more impossible escape seems, the more the stories fascinate us. Across the ages, different places have come to mind as the ultimate challenges for escapers. Each era has had its notorious prisons — from England’s Tower of London, where people who posed a threat to the government awaited execution, to France’s Bastille, where inmates could be locked away their whole lives without a trial. Slavery — whether in ancient Rome or in many of the American states during the 1800s — was a fate millions dreamed of fleeing. The prisoner of war camps of the Second World War (1939–45), with their barbed wire, armed guards, and spotlights, seemed inescapable to all but a determined few. And the “Cold War” that followed, between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, brought with it the infamous East German border wall, which kept all but the most desperate defectors behind its barrier of concrete, mines, and armed patrols with orders to shoot.
And yet despite the odds, a few found ways past these deadly traps, ways that show the amazing range of human creativity. They got out with clever disguises or ingenious hiding places; by patiently waiting or boldly dashing forward; by using whatever materials were at hand, crafting tools of escape from even the most innocent-looking objects.
“I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything, the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.”
Harriet Tubman, an American slave who escaped from her master in 1849, remembered her first thrilling taste of freedom. Her reaction is surprisingly similar to the feelings recalled by other escapers, whatever the place and time. Many speak of the same exhilarating moment when, though they could scarcely believe it, they were actually free.
Once Harriet Tubman made it north to freedom she wasn’t content to stay there, however. Despite the dangers, she returned south again and again to help other slaves escape, more than three hundred in all. She became part of the network of antislavery helpers known as the Underground Railroad, people who hid runaway slaves on their journeys north out of the slave states, often all the way to Canada.
Still, escape from the slave states was no easy matter. Often thousands of miles had to be crossed, with professional slave catchers close on runaways’ trails. But until the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in 1863, many were desperate enough to try. One slave even had friends package him inside a wooden box, three feet by two feet, and mail him to the state of Pennsylvania, where slavery was illegal. He spent 27 hours inside, and no one paid much attention to the label: This Side Up, With Care. Amazingly, he survived, and Underground Railroad workers unpacked Henry “Box” Brown, as he became known, in Philadelphia.
Some people have managed to escape all on their own, without aid, but many others could not have been successful without the bravery of secret helpers on the outside. The Underground Railroad was the most famous of such networks in the 1800s. A hundred years later, the Second World War saw the birth of secret organizations dedicated to helping Allied soldiers escape or evade capture by the enemy.
“It is every officer’s duty to escape...”
An Allied combat pilot of the Second World War faced huge risks every time he climbed into the cockpit. If shot down, he hoped to bail out and parachute to safety. But even if he survived the landing his troubles were only beginning. His mission had probably taken him far over enemy territory — maybe Germany or occupied France. Chances were he’d been spotted on the way down, and enemy soldiers were already rushing to take him prisoner.
Military intelligence in England realized how critical it was to get these pilots, as well as the soldiers stuck in prisoner of war (POW) camps, back into action. A new branch of the British Secret Intelligence Service — dubbed MI9 — was formed. Its job was to do everything possible to keep downed pilots out of enemy hands and to help prisoners of war to escape. Working round-the-clock, the people at MI9 came up with gadgets and schemes to stay ahead of the enemy. The “science” of escape was born.
One unconventional technical officer at MI9, named Christopher Clayton-Hutton, realized that many escape tricks had already been discovered — by the soldiers of the First World War. Clayton-Hutton recruited schoolboys to read memoirs from World War I for clues to what a soldier needed in order to escape. He was impressed by the boys’ work. Many of the ingenious escape methods of the previous war had been forgotten.
Clayton-Hutton scanned the boys’ list of escape aids, and came across “dyes, wire, needles, copying paper, saws, and a dozen other items, some of which I should never have dreamed of.”
He set to work on an “escape kit” that every pilot could carry in the front trouser pocket of his uniform and that held essentials to keeping him at liberty: compass, matches, needle and thread, razor, and soap (looking grubby was a sure giveaway when you were on the run!). Food was provided in small, concentrated form: malted milk tablets or toffee.
MI9 also wracked its brains to help prisoners of war escape their German camps. Getting out was hard enough, but once outside a crucial item was needed if they hoped to stay free — a map. Escaping POWs hoped to cross the German border into Switzerland, a country that had remained neutral in the war. From there they could make contact with helpers and get home.
But without a map, they were more likely to be recaptured while wandering near the border, lost. And it couldn’t be just any old map. It had to open without rustling (escapers often consulted maps while search parties were combing the area nearby), and it had to be readable even when wet, and no matter how many times it was folded and creased. MI9 hit upon the solution: reproduce maps on silk.
But how would they get them to the prisoners? All POWs received mail from home, so MI9 came up with ways to sneak the maps in through letters and packages from “relatives.” Working with the music company HMV, they inserted thin maps inside records, which would be sent to prisoners by nonexistent aunts.
As the war continued, MI9’s tricks got cleverer. POWs were sent blankets that, once washed, revealed a sewing pattern that could be cut and stitched to make a German-looking jacket — a perfect disguise. The razor company Gillette helped to make magnetized razor blades that worked as compasses. Wires that cut bars were smuggled in shoelaces, screwdrivers inside cricket bats
.
The stories of the lucky Allied soldiers who escaped from Germany were kept secret for many years, and important details were changed in or left out of books published after the war. Many people feared that a new war with the Soviet Union was on the horizon, and it would be foolish to give away escape tricks and routes that might prove useful during the Cold War. After all, a known escape trick is a useless one.
It was the Cold War that gave rise to one of the most famous symbols of imprisonment, and of the dream of escape: Germany’s Berlin Wall. This concrete barrier, topped with barbed wire and dotted with watchtowers and arc lamps, was begun by the Communist government of East Germany in 1961 to halt the flow of thousands of citizens defecting to West Germany. Soon the entire country was split in two by the border wall. In East Berlin some people could look out their apartment windows and see into the homes of West Berliners living on the other side. And yet they were completely cut off from one another. As one border guard put it, even though the other side “was only six or seven meters away I would never go there. It would have been easier to go to the moon. The moon was closer.”
Although many residents of East Germany accepted their government and living conditions, others found they could not. Freedom — the freedom to travel, to say and write what they believed without fear of punishment — beckoned. Until the wall was torn down in 1989, countless escapes were attempted at the wall, and many died trying to get across it to the West. They tried climbing over it, tunneling under it, driving past it hidden in the cars of West Germans. Once again, it seemed that the bigger the obstacle placed between a person and freedom, the more human creativity is inspired to meet the challenge.
Imagine for a moment that you have been taken prisoner. You and your fellow captives are marched in a long line toward barracks behind barbed wire. As you file along the winding path leading to the compound, the guards at the head of the line suddenly disappear around a corner. You twist your head around. The guards bringing up the rear are also momentarily out of sight as you round the bend. For this one instant, you won’t be spotted if you dive out of line and roll under the bushes along the path. You have mere seconds to make up your mind. What do you do? Stay in line and face the misery — but safety — of captivity? Or seize the moment and make a break for it?
Anyone in your place will dream of escape, but only a few will act on the impulse. MI9 estimated that far fewer than one percent of Allied prisoners of war took the plunge and escaped in World War II. But who? What kind of person?
Psychologists have found that people who escape often share the same character traits. They’re not necessarily the strongest or the boldest, but they are open-minded and flexible — people who can improvise on the spot and adapt quickly to changes. If one tactic fails, they try another. They are willing to take risks and learn from mistakes. Often they are good actors, able to blend in with locals and to hide their fear or their intentions. And they’re not the type to freeze when placed in a difficult situation, as many people do. They can keep a clear head and not panic. Perhaps most importantly, they firmly believe that their future survival depends on themselves, and no one else.
Pierre Mairesse Lebrun, a French cavalry lieutenant imprisoned by the Germans in World War II, felt that in some ways the personal bravery needed for an escape was even greater than that needed for the battlefield: “I think it’s easy to be brave in war, unless you are a complete coward. Escaping is a voluntary act of bravery, which is very difficult. Very difficult when you are risking your life.”
Lebrun himself certainly had his share of courage. Using his friend’s cupped hands as a stirrup, he vaulted over his prison camp’s barbed wire fence in plain view of the guards. Under fire, Lebrun dashed for the outer wall, bobbing and weaving like a hunted rabbit. He waited until the guards stopped to reload their guns, then scrambled over the second wall. Even his enemies had to admire his nerve: “For sheer mad and calculated daring,” wrote the camp’s German security officer, “the successful escape of … Pierre Mairesse Lebrun, will not, I think, ever be beaten.”
Perhaps not, but it certainly faces some tough competition. What follows are ten stories of real people who refused to give up their dreams of escape, no matter how huge the struggle.
Some are stories of people born into slavery, but who dreamed of freedom. And of those whose freedom was taken away from them, but who fought to win it back. Sailors kidnapped by slave-traders and dragged across the Sahara. A man captured in his homeland by the army of ancient Rome and condemned to fight to the death as a gladiator. A family that took to the air to cross a wall that seemed to have sprung up overnight, dividing their country in half and holding them prisoners in their own land.
These are dramas from across time and around the globe. From medieval knights trapped with their lady in a castle under siege, to modern diplomats who slipped through the fingers of captors in an embassy hostage-taking that shocked the world. From political prisoners who found ingenious ways out of some of history’s most feared prisons, to soldiers who hatched a bold plan to break out of Germany’s “escape-proof” camp, and a fighter pilot who faced every airman’s worst nightmare — being trapped alive in a crashing plane.
All true stories of human courage, but also stories of hope — because hope is what kept these remarkable people going in the face of the most overwhelming obstacles and dangers.
Breakout from the Bastille
Paris, France, 1754
A GUARD PEERED THROUGH THE SMALL HOLE in the heavy wood door. With a sigh he watched the prisoner inside — writing again! This flood of letters, begging for his case to be reviewed, was a nuisance. The guard let the metal flap slam over the hole and walked away, shaking his head. Henri Latude could write until doomsday, he thought. It would come to nothing.
Inside the cold cell, the prisoner rubbed his ink-stained fingers to warm them. Blinking wearily, he angled his sheet of paper into the shaft of light streaming from a small chink in the stone wall. He had been locked up in the Bastille for five years without a trial, put away by a lettre de cachet — a piece of paper that let officials arrest someone in the King’s name and keep him in prison for as long as they liked.
A foolish prank had landed him here. Like countless young men, Latude had left the countryside to seek a career in Paris. But that expensive city soon gobbled up his savings, and he could barely pay the rent on his tiny room. Favor at the royal court must be the key to success, Latude brooded. Why, people from backgrounds humbler than his had been raised to positions of honor by making the right impression there!
Latude came up with a scheme to gain favor with Madame de Pompadour, the close friend of King Louis XV. People said she was the real power behind the throne. They also said that she was terribly afraid of being poisoned or attacked by her enemies. Day and night she kept doctors and antidotes to poison at her side. She would never be the first to taste any dish.
That gave Latude an idea. What if he were to warn her of an attempt on her life and save her? She would be so grateful — surely she would promote him to some high office for his actions!
Latude bought four glass toys that would break with a bang when the ends were snapped. He sprinkled them with talcum powder and bundled them in a package. The outer wrapper was addressed to Madame de Pompadour. On the package inside he wrote, “Madame, I beg you to open this in secret.” Smiling excitedly, Latude put his harmless toy bomb in the mail.
Then he rushed to court and begged to be allowed to see Madame. He had overheard a plot to send her a bomb!
The detective assigned to the strange case had his doubts about this loyal informer. He asked Latude to write down what had happened. Sure enough, the handwriting on Latude’s statement matched the writing on the package.
No one laughed at Latude’s prank. Perhaps he really had meant to hurt Madame, but was too foolish to do it properly. And surely he hadn’t acted alone — this must be part of a larger plot. When Latude finally confessed to his little plan,
no one believed him. The lettre de cachet did the rest.
Once the Bastille’s heavy doors slammed behind him, Latude felt as if he had been buried alive. Since childhood he had heard stories of Paris’s notorious prison, and they had filled him with dread. Its eight huge towers, linked by stone walls, cast a gloomy shadow over the Saint-Antoine district. No one seemed to know what went on behind those walls: any prisoner lucky enough to be released was sworn to silence about life inside. But the rumors were enough to terrify Latude’s young imagination. It was where dangerous people — traitors, political enemies of the King — were locked away. And never heard from again.
And so he wrote letter after letter, asking for mercy, for justice. Most importantly, he begged those on the outside — Don’t forget me! He wrote to the prison governor, to the chief of police, to ministers, to Madame de Pompadour herself. Letters were his lifeline to the outside world, and he clung to them.
At first prison officials mailed his letters. Then as time passed — and no one answered him — Latude’s letters got stranger. He sent one minister an envelope full of cut-out letters of the alphabet, asking him to put them together himself in whatever words would move him to pity. Prison censors wondered, Is Latude going mad?
The governor of the prison ordered that Latude’s ink and paper be taken from him. To the governor’s horror, Latude kept writing — on a torn piece of his shirt, in his own blood.
Everything changed when Latude was given a roommate — Antoine Allègre, another troublemaker. The police hoped that putting the two men together would get them talking. Maybe they would let slip some new information about their crimes.
The result was surprising: Allègre and Latude started behaving themselves. The flood of letters stopped, as did Allègre’s shouts and violent outbursts. Bastille officials sighed with relief.
What they never suspected was that Latude and Allègre had given up on letter-writing and screaming at the guards for a reason. They had a new idea now, and it filled all their thoughts. Escape.
Escapes! Page 1