The Cooler King

by Patrick Bishop

  The prisoners relied on Red Cross parcels to supplement the meagre German rations. When deliveries were running smoothly, they ate reasonably well. In the summer of 1942, though, the supply was badly disrupted. Food had never mattered much back home where there was plenty of it. Even during the war the airmen had been used to three meals a day – good, bad or indifferent, depending on which station they were based in – which arrived on the table without them having to think about it. In the camp, food came to matter a great deal. It was the source of more fantasies than sex. Men savoured the memory of meals past and dreamed of feasts to come.

  At this time they lived with growling bellies, never quite silenced by the meagre rations. The Geneva Convention stated that prisoners should be given the same food as was issued to depot troops. Instead, wrote Aidan Crawley, the rations were closer to ‘the lowest civilian grade designed for those who were too old to work.’7 Whether this was due to shortages or to a belief that those supplies that were available were wasted on prisoners is not clear. It meant a dismal diet of black bread, margarine, jam and tea for breakfast, lunch of soup or sauerkraut, and a supper of sausage and bread or a potato. Swedes and pumpkins featured prominently. Very occasionally the carcase of an old horse or cow would arrive. To stay healthy, a man living a prison-camp life needed 3,000 calories a day. The German rations averaged about 1,600 calories, which was only adequate if the prisoner took no exercise and slept often. Sometimes the energy value of the food dipped as low as 1,100 calories. Tobacco did something to relieve hunger pangs.

  Much better, though, were the Red Cross parcels, the presence or absence of which could change the mood of the camp. The Red Cross parcel scheme dated back to the previous war, when British prisoners wrote home saying they were starving and desperate for warm clothing. It was revived when the new war came, supported by voluntary subscriptions. The aim was that, every week, a British prisoner would receive a cardboard box filled with food and comforts to supplement his rations, sent via the Red Cross in Switzerland. A typical box weighed 11 lb. and contained some – or, if they were lucky, all – of the following items: a small packet of tea, a tin of cocoa, a bar of milk chocolate, tins of pudding, beef loaf or chopped ham, condensed milk, margarine, processed cheese, sardines, jam, sugar, vegetables, dried eggs, oatmeal and biscuits. They also came with a small 2.5-ounce cake of soap. Tins of fifty cigarettes or pipe tobacco were sent separately. These were addressed to the Senior Officer of the camp and distributed equally among the prisoners.

  Without the supplementary calories, the prisoners were on the edge of starvation.

  The food the Germans dished up provoked constant moaning. The only person who didn’t seem to mind it was Bill Ash. He ate everything, including the strange items which appeared intermittently on the menu. There was runny green cheese which turned everyone else’s stomach. And there was klipfish. No one quite knew what klipfish was. It seemed to be some kind of dehydrated whitebait, which rumour claimed had been lying in a military warehouse since the last war. It looked like wood shavings and after being soaked in water for several days acquired the consistency and smell of wet dog hair. The normal method of cooking was to chop it into squares and fry it. Most of the kriegies could not manage more than a mouthful. Bill wolfed it down, happily cruising the camp asking others if he could have their leftovers. It was hard to explain to British men, who assumed that a Texan must have been brought up on steak three times a day, that he had gone hungry in his early days. ‘The food is terrible,’ he agreed. ‘But think how cheap it is.’8

  Boredom and hunger fuelled frustration and anger. Normally peaceable men picked fights and looked for slights. Bill and Paddy shared an inclination to try and treat the humiliations and privations of camp life as a joke. It was only at night that the mask of humour dropped. Then every man was as close to solitude as the confined space they lived in allowed. They lay in their private spaces, staring at the ceiling or the mattress above their heads, and let the ghosts of home and the past fill their minds. Some nights there was music on the air. It streamed from a wind-up gramophone belonging to a prisoner called Bill Stapleton, who had been shot down in his Spitfire over Dunkirk in June 1940. He had somehow acquired a small collection of classical discs. It was, wrote Bill Ash, ‘some of the most beautiful music ever composed. It would waft out from Bill’s gramophone, across the camp, making us feel just a little bit more free and a little less forgotten.’9 Ash knew most of the melodies well. He had loved classical music since first hearing it during his days at the university, an epoch that now seemed to belong to another century. The sounds from Stapleton’s gramophone brought comfort and also inspiration. They were a link to the world he had left behind and to which he was determined to return as soon as possible. He dreamed of freedom. ‘I do not suppose there was one night in those three years when I did not soar over the wire by merely flapping my arms or mole underneath it like a mite in cheese, take off in a ’plane made of bed boards or catapult myself over the machine-gun posts by a huge rubber band.’10

  With dawn, reality intruded again. How were they going to realize their dreams of escape? He and Paddy spent many hours examining all possibilities, no matter how hare-brained and implausible. Most were rejected after a few minutes. There was no point wasting time on any plan that did not bear examination from all angles. To get support for any project meant winning the approval of the escape committee. They sat in council to examine the plans put before them, ruthlessly rejecting any proposal that had not been meticulously thought through.

  The chairman, Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Buckley, who flew from the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious before being shot down over Dunkirk, was a small, crinkly haired, humorous man with a theatrical streak, which came out in the sketches he wrote and acted in to entertain his fellow kriegies. He also had a gift for administration and a cool, rational mind, qualities that Harry Day had spotted when he made him his deputy at Dulag Luft.

  No one approached Buckley and the committee without a sense of trepidation. ‘Compared to selling this hard-nosed bunch your escape plans, getting past the guards was thought to be relatively easy,’ remembered Bill. ‘Almost any scheme, even one that sounds brilliant at its time of invention, starts to sound faintly demented when you pitch it to an audience who look as if they are trying you for your life.’11

  At last Bill and Paddy came up with a proposal that they felt might pass muster with the committee. Once a week the prisoners were led in groups through the gate to the north of the huts and into the Vorlager for a shower. The guards counted them on the way in and then on the way out again. According to Paddy, ‘the Goons would normally turn on the hot water for a couple of minutes so we could lather up with ersatz soap and later turn them on a second time for us to rinse off.’12 On one of these excursions the pair had noticed a manhole cover set into the floor of the shower room. On lifting it they discovered it led down into a small space which housed the pipes for the mains water supply and the cocks which controlled it. There was just enough room in there for two men. If they managed to slip through the hole unobserved they could wait until dark, then sneak out into the Vorlager which was not patrolled at night. Then they could cut through the wire and be on their way. For the scheme to succeed the count in and out of the Vorlager would have to be fixed. By now the kriegies had worked out ways of fooling the guards, distracting them at a vital moment to manipulate the numbers as required.

  The day came when their plan was put before the committee. They waited outside Barrack 69 where the members met, protected by a network of lookouts who stood unobtrusively at key points ready to signal the arrival of any ferrets. Then Bill and Paddy were called in and given the chance to sell their proposal. Although they did not know it, the committee was in a receptive mood. With so many tunnels being discovered they had decided to concentrate on just one project, a well-engineered, deep-lying shaft which had its entrance under one of the barracks. They were inclined to look favourably on any scheme that did not requ
ire digging.

  The committee listened in silence and asked a few questions. Then the pair were dismissed and the deliberations began. A little while later they were called back and told the plan had been approved. Bill and Paddy felt a mixture of satisfaction and apprehension. Something that had been theoretical was now real. Freedom had just inched a little bit closer. But so too had the prospect of a fusillade of bullets in the back.

  The support of the committee meant they now had access to the resources of the escape organization. They were kitted out with a compass, a hand-drawn map of the area using information gathered from previous escapers and – very importantly – sustenance. If they could feed themselves during their first days on the run they would reduce the risk of discovery due to being forced to buy – or steal – food from local people. Prison camps were full of men who had acquired specialist knowledge of many subjects before they were drawn into the war. Much of this expertise could be usefully applied to escape activities. Among the committee members was a leading nutritionist. David Lubbock was married to the daughter of a prominent scientist, Sir John Boyd Orr. Together they had produced a study called Feeding the People in Wartime, which formed the basis for the government’s rationing programme. Lubbock joined the Fleet Air Arm in 1940 and flew in Albacore biplanes off aircraft carriers. In late 1941 he was shot down during a raid on Kirkenes in Northern Norway and was captured by the Germans while attempting to walk to Russia.

  Lubbock applied his expertise to devising as balanced a diet as possible for the prisoners with whatever was to hand. He also invented a high-energy food bar – ‘the Mixture’ – to sustain escapers, as used by Goldfinch, Best and Lamond on their blitz-tunnel bid. He persuaded prisoners to donate to a food pool to provide the ingredients for the bars. They were made out of a fudge comprised of sugar, oatmeal, chocolate or cocoa, butter or margarine, dried milk or flour, Ovaltine or Bemax and raisins. The ingredients were boiled up then dried and cut into flat cakes. Compared with the fare the prisoners were used to it tasted delicious. The bars were stored to await issue to any prisoner or prisoners whose plan had been approved by the escape committee. Bill and Paddy were now eligible, and the food problem was solved.

  But what about clothing? When on the run they would need to look nondescript. Once in the camp prisoners were issued with RAF uniform. Bulk deliveries of underwear, socks, shirts, razors, ties, tunics, trousers and greatcoats arrived from London via the Red Cross in Switzerland. In the Germans’ reckoning, uniforms were a deterrent to escape, making the wearer conspicuous if they ever made it beyond the wire. This was not quite true. Half the male population was in military dress of one sort or another and the variety was so great that it took an expert to know which was which. Civilian clothing was obviously less risky though, and before long the camp tailors had learned how to transform any bit of service kit into something that would pass muster in a land swarming with foreign workers wearing often wildly ill-assorted combinations of clothes.

  Bill and Paddy would not require much of a disguise. They were escaping during a hot continental summer, and a pair of trousers and a shirt were all they needed in order to blend in. With the issue of a pair of homemade shears to cut through the barbed wire of the Vorlager fence, they were ready to go.

  The morning dawned when their turn came to use the showers. The shower party was mustered outside the huts and marched through the gate that connected East Compound to the Vorlager. One of the guards counted them off as they trooped through. The idea was that once inside the shower room they would lever up the manhole and drop through to hide among the pipes and stopcocks. When the session was over the remaining prisoners would march out again. The guards would then check them off again as they departed. Success depended on them being fooled into believing that the same number was walking out as had walked in.

  By now many ruses had been devised to confuse roll calls. Appells were held morning and evening to count everyone in the compound. They took place on the sports field except in bad weather when they took place in the corridors of the barracks. Sick prisoners in possession of a chit from the medical officer were allowed to remain in their rooms where their numbers were verified. When parading outdoors, each barrack lined up in files of five and were counted by the guards, who checked them off against the list of able-bodied prisoners and absentees held by the SBO’s adjutant. It all sounded very orderly, but as the camp history related, ‘in practice the parade was a complete farce, purposely made so by the prisoners. They never formed up properly, but kept moving around and creating disturbances. The sick prisoners slipped from one room or barrack to another and were counted twice.’ The Germans soon despaired. They ‘carried out a superficial count as well as they could under the impossible circumstances, but rarely attempted to take a second count, usually accepting the count falsified by the adjutant or falsifying their own account.’13

  When a small group of men was involved, deception was much harder. The best hope was to fake a disturbance at the time the count was being taken and hope that the escapees’ absence would not be noted in the confusion. When the time came, Bill and Paddy would have to endure a long damp day among the pipes before making their way out at nightfall to cut through the wire.

  Initially things went well. The prisoners lined up under the shower heads. A guard turned on the water and they began to lather up. As the place filled with steam, singing and boisterous shouting, Bill and Paddy lifted the manhole cover and slipped into their hideout. Crouched among the plumbing they listened hard. Soon they heard an angry voice. One of the prisoners was abusing one of the guards. The disturbance had clearly started, but it had gone off earlier than planned. They heard someone yelling insults about Adolf Hitler, followed by a torrent of angry German. Then the hiss of water died away. There was more shouting and the slap of naked feet. The normal routine was for the taps to be turned on twice – once to soap up, once to rinse off. It looked like there would be no second blast of water today. As a punishment for the insults to the Führer, the prisoners were going back to the compound covered in soap.

  They lined up outside the shower block to be escorted back to the compound. A few ferrets joined them. At the Vorlager gate one of the guards stood waiting to count them off. The prisoners began to mill around trying to confuse him into miscounting. The Germans were in no mood for further provocations. ‘Their efforts at distracting or enraging were met by prods from a rifle to keep quiet,’ wrote Bill.14 The guard finished his count. A look of suspicion crossed his face and he began again. By the end of the third count he was in no doubt. He yelled a warning and the camp burst into life.

  Squatting in their hiding place Bill and Paddy heard the air fill with ‘the noise of running jackboots. Whistles blew, sirens blared and guard dogs barked themselves into a frenzy.’ A few minutes later the door in the shower room slammed open. They clung to the hope that somehow the searchers would overlook the manhole. But then they heard the whining and snuffling of Alsatians and knew the end had come. ‘Paddy and I looked at each other,’ Bill remembered. ‘We could shred the map to stop the searchers finding out what we knew, but our pockets were crammed with the Mixture. With minutes to go before we were caught we adjusted our plans. The best we could manage was not to let the Mixture fall into enemy hands.’15 When the Germans finally lifted the manhole cover their torches flickered over two pale faces, smeared with chocolate, chewing with stolid determination. They emerged with their hands up. Bill dropped the last of the Mixture for the Alsatians to eat, hoping, he joked later, that they might remember this good deed if he met them on some future escape attempt. The bid for freedom had ended in farce. There was little satisfaction to be salvaged from the episode as they were led off to another spell in the cooler.

  FIVE

  No one remembered who first called the prison block ‘the cooler’, but the name captured well the chilly sterility of life in solitary. The threat of a spell alone in a cell ten feet long by four feet wide was a real deterrent. It w
as above all a psychological punishment: ‘as near to living in a vacuum as a man has been able to contrive’, was how Aidan Crawley described it. He went on: ‘When the society of his fellow human beings is taken away from a man, when there is no certainty that it will be restored, when there are no books or writing materials to remind him of it or to keep the mind busy, he is left face to face with the bare bones of himself. The prospect is often terrifying.’1

  The chatter of your fellow kriegies might drive you mad with its repetition and inanity when you heard it every day. But when you had been alone with your thoughts for a while you yearned for the comforting familial banality of the squabbles, the feeble jokes and the moaning. In later life Bill Ash would make light of his many trips to the cooler. He passed it off as little more than a minor irritation, the price you paid for being an escapologist, and something to be accepted and endured with as little fuss as possible. The ordeal must nonetheless have been a real one for him, especially when, in defiance of the Geneva Convention, the Germans deprived him of books, pencils and paper. For a would-be author, addicted to the written word, this was a severe loss.

  Without the intellectual sustenance that was as essential to him as food or drink, he was forced to develop techniques for coping with the loss. He dredged his memory for poems he had learned at school. He got so good at it he could summon up not just the verses but the image of the pages they were printed on. There were only so many poems that came to mind, though, and the comfort they brought had its limits. He found other means of keeping himself sane. ‘Over the coming years I would get a lot of practice at how to survive… spells in solitary,’ he wrote, ‘and to pass the time by living more in my own head than in the grim reality of isolation and semi-starvation.’2