Great Escapes

by Barbara Bond

  It was another month before his parents heard that he had been captured and he received his first letter from them on 24 September, dated 12 August. He ‘celebrated’ his birthday on 12 November which he recalled, unsurprisingly, as a ‘bad day’. His memoirs do, however, highlight the extent to which the prisoners of war showed that indomitable British sense of humour and tried to poke fun at their German captors, a practice which they often described as ‘goon-baiting’. As the Germans attempted to make them drill to German words of command, they would respond with everyone doing different things, ensuring that the entire parade became a shambles. On 18 November all the seafaring officers, whether from the Royal or Merchant Navies, were forced to march twenty kilometres (twelve miles) to Oflag VIIC/Z at Titmoning. It was here, he recalled, that they started to receive Red Cross parcels.

  Prisoners of war at Marlag and Milag Nord camp, July 1943. John Pryor is fourth from the left in the third row from the back.

  The story of how Pryor joined the team of MI9 coded correspondents while in Oflag VIIIC/Z has already been told in Chapter 5. On 20 January 1941, Pryor, Elder and other naval officers were transported by rail and lorry to the Sandbostel camp in northern Germany, some forty kilometres (twenty-four miles) north east of Bremen. This proved to be a large camp comprising several barbed wire compounds, rows of military huts and watch towers. The flat, sandy topography must have looked particularly bleak in the middle of winter, but it was clear that they felt more comfortable surrounded by naval colleagues in the Marlag and Milag Nord camp huts.

  Pryor’s awareness of the extent to which ‘escaping was the duty of a PoW’, however hopeless a task it might appear, has already been highlighted. Both in this camp, however, and the new Marlag and Milag Nord camp later constructed by the Germans southwest of Sandbostel, it is clear that there was always much activity focused on escaping, specifically on digging tunnels. Additionally, a radio had been acquired in exchange for 2,000 cigarettes from a Belgian worker. The prisoners of war were often better provided with cigarettes and chocolates from Red Cross parcels, bolstered also by supplies sent in by MI9, than either the local German population or conscripted workers, and they often used these as a form of currency. The new radio replaced the crystal set, which had been ingeniously constructed by using the wiring of the hut as an aerial and which had been accidentally destroyed by the German guards during a search. This allowed them to listen to the BBC news which was subsequently cascaded orally through the other huts every night.

  Everyday life at Marlag and Milag Nord camp. A line of men stand in a queue outside a low wooden hut to see a dentist at the camp hospital, drawn by John Worsley, April 1944.

  Pryor had been sending coded messages to his parents for some time but it was on 7 May 1942 that he sent the one requesting specific help from MI9 in support of a planned escape. The deciphered message, requesting, amongst other things, maps of the Swiss border has been described in detail in Chapter 5, as has the parcel he received that contained a chess set with escape aids hidden within it. Together with Lieutenant John Wells, John Pryor’s plan to escape, which would have been sanctioned by the Escape Committee, was for them to pretend to be foreign workers dressed in suitable working attire and carrying forged passes. They planned to travel by night and hide by day. No mention was made by Pryor that they had access to any maps, but he had managed to make a compass by magnetizing two sewing needles with the magnet in the handle of his razor and using a hollow shirt stud as the pivot. Their plan involved them walking the estimated seventy kilometres (forty-five miles) to Hamburg, taking two or three nights to complete this section of their journey, and then boarding a train to the port of Lübeck where they would hope to find a Swedish ship in the harbour and smuggle themselves on board. It is known that MI9 produced a map of the port of Lübeck, similar to that of Danzig illustrated earlier in the chapter. Whilst the only copy of this map which has been discovered to date has been the Bulletin version, as late as June 1944 a new plan of Lübeck docks was being reported in the War Diary as having been produced and was being sent to the prisoner of war camps.

  The map of Lübeck, printed on paper, from the Bulletin (with detail below).

  Pryor and Wells took their opportunity on 20 September 1943. They remained on the run for two days but were sadly recaptured on the second night when they were seen by two policemen and, while Wells tried (in halting German) to talk their way out of the situation, Pryor was searched and found to have ‘equipment and a jacket full of oatcakes’. They received the customary spell in solitary confinement but managed to see the positive side of their solitude as an agreeable change to the communal life they had experienced in captivity for the previous three years.

  While Pryor’s bid for freedom was not successful, his memoirs contain many mentions of planning escapes and he clearly recalled that escaping was the duty of every prisoner of war but with ‘the whole of NW Europe under German control and with no maps or compass it seemed a pretty hopeless task’. He was involved in detail in the preparation of the escapes, often helping to dig tunnels, and helped many others to escape successfully. Pryor and his colleagues continued to plan escapes and harass their German captors as well as they could. Their activity continued up to the Normandy landings in June 1944. Later, messages were broadcast that prisoners of war should no longer attempt to escape but remain in their camps, the famous ‘stay-put’ order. MI9 was quick to realize that escaped prisoners of war roaming around the front line would likely be in danger and also a possible distraction to the advancing Allies. He was liberated by the Allies in 1945 and went on to serve his country in peacetime as a hydrographic surveyor in the Royal Navy.

  Liberated naval and merchant seaman prisoners of war at Marlag and Milag Nord camp at Westertimke, 29 April 1945.

  Lieutenant David James RNVR

  The escape of Lieutenant David Pelham James of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) was notable since he did succeed in his bid for freedom via the Baltic ports’ escape route. James had made multiple escape attempts throughout his captivity. His final and successful attempt was from the Marlag and Milag Nord camp on 10 February 1944, disguised as a ‘distressed Swedish sailor’, arriving back in the UK on 16 March 1944. His final escape journey proved to be extremely tortuous.

  The Baltic Coast ports and a plan of Marlag camp, from David James’ book, A Prisoner’s Progress, published in 1947.

  He journeyed initially by train to Lübeck, the same route which Pryor had planned to take. When he could find no Swedish ships, he travelled on to Stettin (see the Bulletin map of Stettin on page 172), where he similarly failed to find a suitable ship to board. Stettin was the port where MI9 had suggested in their briefings that a good place to find Swedish sailors was in the local brothel. It was a particularly useful venue for those attempting to escape since it was reserved for foreigners: no Germans were allowed to enter. It was eventually blown up by the RAF during a raid in the summer of 1944. In desperation, as he was running out of money, James continued on to Danzig where he eventually found a Danish ship, the Scandia, which he boarded and on which he was befriended by a stoker. He mentioned in his account that, had he known the layout of the port and continued for another three miles, he would have found the berth of the Swedish ships. In itself, this appeared to indicate that he personally had had no access to the Danzig port plan. However, he did know enough to make his way to a port and to seek out a ship bound for a neutral country. The ship left Danzig for Denmark and docked in Lübeck port en route, at which point its destination was changed to Konigsberg. James realized that he would have to change ship. As he knew the geography of Lübeck reasonably well from a previous, failed, escape attempt, he was able to board a Finnish ship bound for Stockholm, bribed the stoker and sixty hours later he was in the safe-keeping of the British consul in Stockholm.

  A sketch map of Lübeck showing where David James unsuccessfully (10 December 1943) and successfully (20 February 1944) escaped from Lübeck to Sweden, fro
m his book, A Prisoner’s Progress, published in 1947.

  Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot

  Another example of the successful use of this route was the escape of Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot who flew with the RAF Coastal Command out of Leuchars in Fife on 11 December 1941. His mission was to patrol the coast of Norway, taking aerial photographs. On seeing a German convoy, he attacked on a ‘mast high bombing run’. The enemy returned fire and the aircraft took direct hits in the starboard engine and tail. He was forced to land in the sea and all the crew made it into the dinghy before the aircraft sank. They drifted for two days and were subsequently picked up by a German convoy. Philpot was eventually imprisoned in Stalag Luft III at Sagan. He escaped on 29 October 1943 through a tunnel and travelled by train from Sagan, over 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Berlin, north to the Baltic ports. He made for the port of Danzig and indicated in his escape report that he was familiar with the local geography from ‘the flimsy of which I had a copy and which proved invaluable’. The ‘flimsy’ was almost certainly sheet A4 of the port of Danzig which had been produced on both silk and tissue by MI9. He eventually boarded the Swedish ship Bjorn which was loading coal. Although the Captain was not happy with his presence on board, he was hidden in the coal bunker by the crew and landed in Södertälje on 3 November. He travelled by train to Stockholm and arrived at the British Legation on 4 November. Yet again, there is evidence that copies of the large-scale port plans were reaching the camps and being put to very good use by those planning to escape.

  There are numerous examples, in both the published literature and contemporary records, of escapes, both successful and unsuccessful, via Swedish or Finnish ships from the Baltic ports. Certainly, Lieutenant John Pryor’s unsuccessful escape with Johnny Wells from Marlag and Milag Nord camp in 1943 was an attempt to reach Lübeck. While they were captured before they had succeeded in reaching the railway, Pryor did acknowledge that Lübeck was their planned destination. James also headed directly for the Baltic ports, trying them in turn until he found a suitable ship. Similarly, Philpot made directly for Danzig, indicating that he had access to a map which had afforded him knowledge of the local geography of the port. It is a matter of record that this was the most successful escape route which MI9 established out of occupied Europe, to Sweden and eventual freedom. It is also a matter of record that MI9 produced large-scale plans of the Baltic ports and persuasive evidence has been found to support the contention that those same maps were sent to the camps for use in escapes. Yet again, MI9 planned a particular route to freedom, briefed in detail on it, and produced the maps to ensure that the prisoners of war had the very best chance of success when using this particular route.

  Oliver Philpot’s Stalag Luft III (Sagan) identity tag was concealed behind a photograph of his first wife Natalie, so that he could prove he was a prisoner of war and not a spy in case of his capture.

  8

  COPYING MAPS IN THE CAMPS

  ‘For some a map is not a piece of paper: it is a passport . . .’

  (from a TV advertisement, 2003, collected by Dr David Forrest)

  Prisoners of war spent much time and energy copying maps from originals which MI9 succeeded in getting into the camps. Multiple copies of the maps needed to be produced when multiple escapes were planned and executed. If only one map got through, there was a clear need to copy it and the most straightforward way was simply to trace a copy. Airey Neave described this practice in They Have Their Exits: ‘less technical minds studied languages, copied maps and collected stolen articles of civilian clothing’. However, to identify such copies in a British map collection is exceptional. The discovery of two such maps afforded the opportunity to look closely at the copying techniques used by the prisoners of war and also to try to identify the MI9 maps from which they had been drawn. If the maps could be identified, it would provide some independent evidence of the success of MI9’s escape and evasion mapping programme since their very existence bears witness to the fact that they must have been used in successful escapes: how else could they have found their way to the UK?

  COPYING MAPS

  When the individual camp histories came to be written at the end of the war, they often contained useful check lists of the sort of escape aids which were needed and found to be most useful. Certainly, that for Stalag Luft III (Sagan) contained a very detailed chapter on the type of escape materials which had been needed. Maps at varying scales were described, such as large-scale port plans ‘showing location of quays used by neutral shipping’ and ‘maps of neutral frontiers’. There was also mention of the need for a map tracer and enlarger. Interestingly, in the Colditz camp history, it is clear that the prisoners were able to steal such a machine, known as a pantograph, from the canteen and put it to very good use, although it was not made clear why such a machine would be in the canteen in the first place. Use of the pantograph not only meant that maps could be traced and enlarged at the same time, but also that multiple copies could be produced through repeated use of the machine.

  PRINTING MAPS

  Some prisoners of war were able to set up miniature printing works. Wallis Heath, who had been an officer in the Royal Corps of Engineers, recounted the story of how the prisoners of war in Oflag XI (Braunschweig), initially hand copied maps which they had received from MI9. However, he and Philip Evans, a prisoner in the same camp, had experience of printing and so they decided to set themselves up as the Brunswick Printers. They did so in the knowledge that the Allies were advancing and the camp apparently planned a mass escape as they feared German reprisals.

  British prisoners of war welcome the arrival of liberating American troops at Oflag XI in Braunschweig (Brunswick), 12 April 1945.

  Showing considerable ingenuity, they were apparently able to create both the substitute artwork and printing plates they required. They removed some limestone tiles from the toilet area and ground them clean to ensure the surface would be suitable for use as lithographic stones to serve as printing plates. They traced the detail of the maps on to the tiles using carbon paper which, one can only assume, they had stolen or acquired through bribery from their German guards. Separate reverse tracings were made for each colour on the map, black for text and railways, red for roads and blue for rivers. These were to act as the individual printing plates for each layer of detail on the map. They then went over the linework with a fine pen dipped in boiled margarine. In essence, they were using the lithographic principle that water and oil do not mix and utilizing what was essentially the collotype method of reproduction. Tiles were coated with gelatine, taken from the tins of meat in Red Cross food parcels, to act as a sensitizing agent. Inks were made from all sorts of powders, sometimes even those intended as stage make-up. Those elements of map detail drawn in the margarine retained the coloured ink. They constructed a printing press from wooden floor boards covered in leather with a roller made from a window bar. The tiles were used in turn to build up the map image. While the maps made by the Brunswick Printers were never apparently used as the Braunschweig camp was liberated peacefully, there is some limited evidence that similar techniques were employed elsewhere and the resultant maps used successfully by escaping prisoners of war.

  TWO MANUSCRIPT ESCAPE MAPS

  The first manuscript map shown over the page, was clearly drawn in Oflag VB (Biberach). That deduction is based on the fact that Oflag VB was located in Biberach which is shown at the northern edge of this map. The map extends from this point to the Swiss frontier, which was the escape route which would logically be taken from that particular camp, since it represented the shortest distance to freedom. A number of high profile escapes took place from Biberach. While many of them, not least that of Hugh Woollatt, Neave’s companion on the journey back from Switzerland (see photograph on page 164), did escape via the Schaffhausen Salient, some successfully crossed the Swiss border at the eastern end of Lake Constance. Indeed, the Germans realized the success of that route very early on and guarded that particu
lar area so closely, that eventually most escapers from Biberach chose to travel the longer western route via Schaffhausen.

  The map is in manuscript form and had been hanging on a library wall for many years before being properly identified. The local record simply stated that the map had been deposited in the collection in 1947: the donor was not named but the map was described as a World War II prisoner of war map. It was relatively straightforward to identify the MI9 map from which the Biberach tracing had been made: sheet L32-2/Konstanz of GSGS 3982 [Fabric]. The detail is so closely related, as seen in an extract of that map shown beside the manuscript map below, that it is clearly identifiable as the source map.

  Manuscript map of route from Biberach to the Swiss frontier and detail from GSGS 3982 [Fabric] sheet L32-2/Konstanz covering a similar area.

  The second manuscript map shown on page 194 was far less easy to identify since it was so badly faded. However, the use of software, by staff in the GeoMapping Unit of the School of Geography in Plymouth University, to enhance the image has enabled the original map to be redrawn (as shown on page 195) and the MI9 source to be identified. It would appear that the source map was sheet A, produced by Waddington at MI9’s direction from a Bartholomew map (refer to Appendix 1 and Chapter 3 for details of the source map). The detail from sheet A shown below covers a similar area to the original map. Sheet A was certainly one of, if not the, earliest map in the whole of MI9’s map production programme, witnessed by the map being identified by the first letter of the alphabet. It is also possibly the map which MI9 termed ‘Double Eagle’, providing small-scale coverage of both Germany and Austria, and adjacent areas.