Also forgotten are the stories of the “home runs” by evaders, men who (at least for a while) avoided capture after being shot down, and men like Robert Prouse, who was captured at Dieppe and escaped a number of times. His career as an evader after being shot down in January 1943 may have lasted only a few hours, but that did not dampen RCAF Pilot Officer Andrew Carswell’s ardour to escape, which he too did more than once. Other home runs were more successful, taking men to freedom in Spain, through Vichy France or Sweden and, for at least one Canadian, the Vatican. Some men, MacDonald included, evaded for weeks before being captured; others slipped by Hitler’s noose entirely. Most of the evaders and a few of the escapers owed an unpayable debt to the civilians in the French Resistance and MI9 escape lines.
The triumph of the victory campaign has largely obscured the story of the Hunger Marches. For 45 days in one case, more than 60 in another, beginning just after New Year’s Day 1945, thousands of Canadians were among the hundreds of thousands of Western POWs being force-marched through a terribly cold and snowy winter. Weeks of sleeping in the open or in unheated barns, rations so poor that one man was reduced to stealing oats meant for horses, trudging through high snowdrifts and shivering in temperatures that reached -40°C combined to break spirits, and sicken and kill thousands. The ostensible reason for these marches that zigzagged away from the American, British, Canadian and Russian armies that by early 1945 were crushing the Reich was to protect the POWs from battle (and thus appeared to accord with Geneva). In reality, the Germans sought to hold on to the POWs for two reasons: to prevent them from adding their strength to the armies and air forces pummelling Germany, and to serve as bargaining chips for some imagined future peace treaty.
On the frozen roads and fields of Germany, men fought to retain what heat they could and to keep as dry as possible while they tended to the sick—and watched their comrades die, their bodies to be left in the snow. Even in their reduced state, they felt shame for their inability to do anything for those who were, incredibly, even more unfortunate than themselves. Private John Grogan’s elegy for an elderly man, this one with a Star of David sewn onto his threadbare coat and who “half lay, half sat on the tongue of an abandoned wagon, one naked foot stuck up from the snow, no bullet wasted on him—brown stains down his gray beard and on his striped pajamas, blood congealing and frozen from a jagged wound in his throat,” is but one of the many that testify to the human drama these men lived through in those terrible days.3
For most of the “Kriegies” (the name the men gave themselves, from the German word for prisoner of war, Kriegsgefangener) liberation did not resemble the end of battle, accompanied by unaccustomed silence or, as Sergeant Major Lucien Dumais recalled, on the beach before Dieppe with the throwing down of one’s gun. Rather, it came with the unexpected arrival of a small Russian, British, American or Canadian detachment at a POW camp or, in some cases, on a road or field in France, Poland or Germany.
* The stories that follow could have been organized thematically, with chapter headings such as “The Terror of Surrendering,” “I’ve Never Been So Homesick” or “The Stench of Death.” Such “silos” would have meant tracing the war years a number of times. Instead, I have opted for a longitudinal organization that begins on the second night of the war and carries through to its end. We meet each of these 45 men at a moment of high drama—when they are shot down, captured or on the run, or when they find themselves in a POW camp—and then follow them through to the end of the war. Issues such as hunger, fear, boredom, daring escapes or longing for mail appear as part of their daily lives rather than being summoned to the fore by this historian’s plan. Following these POWs, escapers and evaders through time and place enabled me to build up a picture of their experiences across the length and breadth of Europe and approximate their experience of time.
CHAPTER ONE
September 1939–December 1940
I alone
Prepare’d myself the conflict to sustain Both of sad pity, and the perilous road, Which my unerring memory shall retrace.
— DANTE, “THE INFERNO”
9–10 SEPTEMBER 1939, BERLIN
RAF PILOT OFFICER “TOMMY” THOMPSON MEETS A VERY IMPORTANT PERSON
In the years that followed, he smiled at the memory of the meeting that occurred two days after bailing out of his plane on the seventh night of the war. And in 1944, when threatened with death, he was saved by the promise the fat, thick-necked man had made under a tree on 10 September 1939.
For Tommy Thompson, there would be nothing phony, or drôle, as the French called it, about the war that had begun months before the Blitzkrieg knifed through Holland, Belgium and France in the spring of 1940. Yet, as he climbed into his two-engine bomber, Thompson could not help but think that this was a funny way to fight a war. In place of 14 bombs, his Whitley Mk III was loaded with thousands of leaflets that, in the strongest language British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s government could muster, told the Germans to stop making war. A few moments after dropping the leaflets, an engine overheated, forcing Thompson and his navigator, Squadron Leader Phillip Murray, to bail out near Weimar.
Although hundreds of others who over the next six years “hit the silk” would report being struck by the silence, Thompson was engulfed in sound as his 25,000-pound bomber—one engine still roaring—spiralled toward him not once but twice before veering off and crashing not far from where he himself landed. After catching his breath, Thompson rushed to the wreck and destroyed its radio, just before a group of civilians captured him and Murray, who had landed nearby.
The police who soon picked them up quickly transferred them to the Luftwaffe. One German officer made alarming comments about “last wishes.”4 However, nothing more threatening than several high-ranking Luftwaffe officers and a “sumptuous repast” awaited them at the small hospital outside Berlin that had been pressed into service as a POW camp.5 Later in the war, the Luftwaffe would have scores of specially trained officers devoted to tricking downed airmen into divulging operational and technical information. But on their second night in Germany, Thompson and Murray faced only a couple of officials who woke them several times during the night to ask about their mission, plane and squadron.
The next morning, the two prisoners were on the move, first through a forest on the far side of which lay a railway siding; then, in what seemed like something out of British music hall comedy, into and out of a passenger carriage; then to a clearing. There through their bloodshot eyes they saw seated in a stout chair on a platform a figure of Falstaffian bulk who held almost as many titles as he wore medals: Reichsminister for forestry, Reichsstatthalter of Prussia and head of the police among them. Hermann Göring was also Reichsminister of aviation. As commander of the Luftwaffe, he merited a salute, though only Murray remembered to afford him this courtesy.
After speaking to Murray alone for a few moments, Göring motioned Thompson over, saying that they had cost him a good night’s sleep. Their flight had caused an air-raid alert that had sent him to a shelter outside the capital, Göring told them, which explained why the second most powerful man in Germany was now conducting an interview beside a railway siding. The Red Baron’s successor commiserated with their loss of “the freedom of the skies” but found Thompson’s presence perplexing, since, for at least a few more hours, Canada and Nazi Germany would (officially) be at peace. More concerned with the propaganda value of pictures of downed airmen looking well-cared-for than with the intricacies of the Statute of Westminster (which in 1931 granted Canada independence in foreign policy) and the Canadian prime minister’s pledge that (even though the Royal Canadian Navy was already operating with the Royal Navy) Parliament would decide if Canada was going to declare war on Germany, Göring skipped over his 1937 meeting with Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.6
Instead, Göring discussed ice hockey, predicting that Thompson would have a complete Canadian team by Christmas. And, with his Luftwaffe destroying cities, slaughte
ring civilians and shredding the Polish army, Göring promised Murray and Thompson that they’d be well-treated and would survive what he assured them would be a short war.
The Air Ministry in London stole a march on Joseph Goebbels’s propaganda plans by announcing on 10 September that Thompson had been “interned in Belgium after having been forced down there” a day earlier. Presumably, being an internee in still-neutral Belgium was substituted for being a POW in Germany to prevent pictures of Thompson in newspapers or newsreels from amounting to a recruiting image for becoming a POW.
13 JUNE 1940, TRONDHEIM, NORWAY
ROYAL NAVY FLEET AIR ARM CAPTAIN VERNON HOWLAND IS SHOT DOWN
The bullet’s nose was slightly flattened as it cut through the metal skin of Vernon Howland’s Skua dive-bomber at almost three times the speed of sound before the 1.3 oz. piece of lead ripped into Howland’s leg with the force of a mule’s kick. The Skua had none of the dash of Junkers Ju-87 and may have flown “like a bathtub,” but it had, Howland recalled, one redeeming feature: “It could take an awful lot of punishment.” Something it proved as machine-gun blasts from two Messerschmitts chipped pieces off its wings when Howland was still ten miles from his target, the battle cruiser Gneisenau, then undergoing repairs in Trondheim, Norway. Although the flak thrown up by Gneisenau’s gunners so badly damaged the plane that when he dropped his bombs, instead of lurching upward, the plane continued diving, finally levelling off close to the water, the Skua remained airborne.
Struggling to return to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the pilot from Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, gambled that he’d be safer over the town than the open water and so coaxed his shuddering plane around, only to hear the sound of bullets fired from machine gunners on the rooftops tearing into the plane’s belly. A few moments later, just beyond the town, the Skua’s engine seized and the plane “seemed to stand on its tail and then just slammed into a clearing in a farmer’s field,” luckily from only treetop height.
Weak from loss of blood, Howland couldn’t, as his gunner did, make a run for Sweden, a dozen miles away. But he remained conscious long enough to see his crewmate return, a German soldier holding a gun at his back.
8 SEPTEMBER 1940, HAMBURG
RAF WARRANT OFFICER 1st CLASS ANDREW COX IS TOLD “WE SHOOT YOU IN THE MORNING”
With his plane on fire 8,000 feet above Hamburg, Andrew Cox reached for his parachute. He was worried, but not about getting out of the burning four-man Hampden bomber; his radioman’s position put him just seconds from the escape hatch. Rather, the proud Bluenose worried about the integrity of his parachute. On a previous raid, battery acid had spilled onto the chute’s canvas cover, eating through it and damaging the small pilot chute, whose job was to pull out the main chute.
Mercifully, the chute deployed, but then, by the light cast by the searchlights, Cox could see he was heading for the Elbe River. To avoid it and the likely fate of drowning, he pulled on the lines on one side of his chute, which caused it to partially collapse, dangerously increasing the speed but changing the angle of his descent. As soon as he let go, the chute blossomed, but he still slammed into the ground so hard he was knocked out.
When he came to, Cox mistook a bright light and the shaking ground for an oncoming train but soon realized that the light was the moon and the thunder in the ground was caused by the pounding hoofs of cattle frightened by the anti-aircraft shells exploding 10,000 feet above them. Spotters, he knew, would be watching for where he landed, so he had to get away quickly. He jumped to his feet and started for a nearby hedge but didn’t get many steps before ending up on his back looking up at the sky, which glowed orange from the burning oil refineries ten miles away. After unclipping his harness, Cox darted for the hedge at the far end of the field.
A short time later, he climbed up the drain pipe of a farmhouse, where he hoped to steal some food, but quickly jumped down when a woman inside opened the window and started to yell. He then avoided a group of drunken soldiers and slipped around the back of another house. Transfixed by the fireworks over Hamburg, the occupants of that house didn’t notice Cox. But their neighbours did; just as he was about to try to open the back door they came rushing out of theirs. Cox ran, but the men soon caught up to him. As they yelled at him in German, he screamed “Englishman, Englishman” until one understood and spat at him. Cox dodged the spittle and landed a fist on the German’s face; an older man then parried Cox’s next punch with his shotgun.7
The men subdued Cox and took him back to the house, where the family looked at him with curiosity. While allowing him to wash and giving him some porridge, the farmer who had blocked his punch kept his gun at the ready until a policeman arrived.
Revolver in hand, the policeman asked Cox questions in broken English. When Cox refused to answer, he shoved the pistol into his stomach, saying, “Now will you tell.” Cox feigned bravery by keeping silent. “What does it matter, anyway? We shoot you in the morning,” said the policeman before bundling Cox into a car.
9–10 SEPTEMBER 1940, HAMBURG AND DULAG LUFT, FRANKFURT
COX DISCOVERS HE IS A GOOD POKER PLAYER
For the first few minutes after waking, Cox thought that the Luftwaffe planned to execute him. Instead, he was marched onto a bus that already held the other members of his crew. It took them to an interrogation centre in Hamburg, where the crew members were isolated. After some time, Cox was brought into a room, where two German officers played the roles British intelligence had warned airmen to expect. One German gave Cox a cup of ersatz coffee as he and another officer, sitting in armchairs, spoke in English, pausing now and again to include Cox in their discussion, which included the latest news about the ongoing Battle of Britain. Cox may have dismissed the grandiose claims he heard and the predictions that England’s morale would crack, both standard fare in Goebbels’s propaganda. But that same day, following an attack by 500 bombers that killed 370 Londoners, including many in an East End public shelter, destroyed when a bomb dropped down its ventilation shaft, and wounded more than 1,400 others, even the Home Intelligence report warned, “The population is showing visible signs of nerve cracking from constant ordeals.”8
After Cox complained about his treatment when he was captured, one of the officers picked up the phone and made a show of berating some underling. Later, in an attempt to find out what type of plane Cox flew and about his course, they appealed to his serviceman’s pride, telling him they needed to ensure that the men who shot him down would get their due recognition. Cox said that since he wasn’t the navigator, he didn’t know the course.
A few hours later he was reunited with his crewmates for a bus ride to the airport, where they boarded a small plane. Each sized up the situation: six of them, three armed German aircrew and one armed guard sitting at the back of the plane. Wordlessly, they agreed that, once airborne, they would make their move. But the Luftwaffe had their measure. Just before taking off, the plane came to an abrupt halt and the door opened to admit six armed guards. One sat next to each POW for the short flight to Hannover. From there they were transferred to a truck for the five-hour drive to Dulag Luft, the interrogation and transit camp near Frankfurt am Main.
There, the psychological operations (psych-ops) game began and included being separated, but given a bed with clean sheets. The Luftwaffe officer who woke Cox the next morning seemed friendly and concerned: “Don’t get up, old chap. I know you must be very tired after what you have been through; however, I have to ask you certain questions.”9 After giving him a Player’s cigarette, which Cox assumed came from British stores captured at Dunkirk, the officer produced a form that he said would be sent to the Red Cross, which would then inform Cox’s family that he was a POW. Cox wrote his name on it but abruptly put the pen down when he realized that many of the questions asked for personal and military information.
Cox’s interlocutor changed tactics, taking out a thick book filled with names and a great deal of information about pilots who had been shot down—
designed to underscore the futility of any further resistance. The German overplayed his hand. “We know you were in a Blenheim bomber,” he said, which told Cox they had not found the wreckage of his Hampden. Cox won the poker game a few minutes later when the officer left the room in anger. A few hours later, the Canadian was released into the camp’s general population.
By the time his wife received a letter from the Red Cross confirming that Cox was a prisoner of war, it was old news. For even before Cox left Dulag Luft, in one of his addresses designed to weaken British morale, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) named him as one of several airmen who had recently been shot down and captured.
LATE 1940, STALAG LUFT I, NEAR STETTIN, GERMANY
COX BLOWS OUT A CANDLE TO SURVIVE
Cox arrived at Stalag Luft I and soon learned that the number 270 stamped on his metal POW identity tag was pronounced zweihundertsiebzig. Two days later, his barracks’ leader told him of the tunnel Vernon Howland and others were digging beneath a pot-bellied stove. The tunnel had to be about 150 feet long. To keep excavation to a minimum, the tunnel was a mere two-and-a-half-feet high by two-and-a-half-feet wide, which still produced 950 cubic feet of earth that had to be hid from the “ferrets,” guards charged with finding tunnels.
The Forgotten Page 2