Colditz
Page 36
He began training for a long cross-country trek over the Spanish mountains to the south coast and thence to Algeria. Some freedom was allowed the officers in Lerida. Pierre went off mountaineering with another officer and suffered a terrifying skree fall. He was carried to a mountain road by stretcher, by ambulance to Lerida and then to a military hospital in Zaragoza; examined thoroughly at last, the verdict was “spinal fracture.” Pierre had never lost consciousness throughout his ordeal.
Pierre remained in plaster right up to his neck for nine months, when he was moved to Madrid. Here he began his recuperation. To lift his head from the pillow caused him to faint. Out of plaster at last he started on the long road of rehabilitation. Before Pierre left the Zaragoza hospital he had enlisted the aid of a carpenter. Together they designed metal and wood braces between the hips and knees, which was where support was primarily needed. He began painfully to learn again how to walk. The strength of an iron will was needed.
After four months in Madrid, he was able to walk short distances with two sticks. He was determined to reach Algiers and he did. In Rabat in December 1943, he encountered Colonel de la Villesy, now commander of an armored division, who asked him to join his command as soon as possible. But first he needed time to recuperate. He went to the hospital Maillot in Algiers. There he came across Franklin Roosevelt’s little book in which he extolled the benefits, physical and spiritual, that had accrued to him as a polio victim by swimming daily.
Roosevelt’s life story had given him the inspiration. Before reading his book it had not occurred to Pierre that, even with limbs paralyzed, he would be able to swim. That was the first inspiration. The second was given to him by a young woman. He admits that for a long time during his convalescence he suffered extremely from moroseness: the spoiled, self-indulged young man with the world at his feet had suddenly become a cripple. He would literally retire to a corner and brood. His conceit, his manly pride, his amour propre preyed on his resistance and fortitude. Then, one day, on the beach, he was approached by a stripling of a girl who had admired Pierre from afar when she was a schoolgirl at Orange.
Hélène transformed his life. She gave Pierre all that was needed to restore his self-respect and his joie de vivre. In three months he became a new man—resurrected.
General de Gaulle was astonished when he interviewed Pierre after his three months’ convalescence. It was then May 1944. Pierre was now walking upright with the assistance of a normal walking stick. De Gaulle allocated him to the Headquarters Staff of General de Lattre de Tassigny. De Lattre was then in Naples, preparing the amphibious invasion of the South of France.
The French seaborne invasion took place on 15 August 1944—about nine weeks after the Normandy invasion. They landed from American assault craft supported by the American Navy and a few French warships. De Lattre had sent Pierre as his representative on the American flagship of the East Navy Force, USS Augusta, where he was accorded uniquely hospitable treatment.
When peace returned, Pierre served for two years in De Gaulle’s Service de Renseignements—in this case, political and civil intelligence—and also in his Service d’Ordre. Then he went into private business. Near his heart always was the desire to ride a horse again. He relearned how to mount and ride. On the ground he would always walk with a limp, tire quickly and require the assistance of a stick: seated on horseback with the weight of his body off his legs, he felt himself like a centaur, at one with his horse and tireless. He was totally at home on a polo pony. He could play better than most of his colleagues and better than many men much younger than himself.
Before General Bór Komorowski left Colditz with the other Prominenten in April 1945, he and four other generals on his staff composed a memorandum containing details of the Warsaw uprising and, in particular, the Allied intervention—or lack of it; it also apparently contained criticisms of some important Allied personalities. The memorandum was to be transmitted to the British Foreign Office at the earliest opportunity. It was given to Jack Pringle, who successfully concealed it in Colditz and in May or June 1945 delivered it to the Foreign Office for action at the appropriate level.
Recent research has failed to unearth this memorandum. It is known that in the Foreign Office section of the Public Record Office certain files have been withheld until the end of the century—not on grounds of national security, but because they might implicate or embarrass people still living today. I think that a document of this importance should be declassified now. While they are still living those who are implicated would at least have the chance to reply. They cannot defend themselves when they are dead.*
Rear Admiral Josef Unrug was liberated by the American Army in April 1945 and went immediately to London, where the Polish government in exile named him head of the Polish Naval Office. When the war ended he decided not to return to communist Poland. In spite of his age and distinguished career, he accepted a modest job in the French fishing industry and worked in that capacity in Agadir, Morocco, for a number of years. He spent his final years in France in a home for former superior officers of the Polish armed forces, and died there in 1973, aged eighty-nine.
Machiel van den Heuvel (“Vandy”) returned to the East Indies when the war was over and was promoted to battalion commander. He played an important part in liberating 800 Chinese in West Java, but on 29 June 1946 he was killed in action against Indonesian rebels. He was forty-six. For all his great work as escape officer of the loyal Dutch “Sixty-Eight” he deserves, in my opinion, some national recognition for his heroism and self-sacrifice. I hope the Dutch nation will always remember him.
After leaving Colditz, Jędrzej Giertych was imprisoned in five different camps. He made no less than thirty attempts to escape, in six of which he succeeded in regaining his freedom for a short time. While in captivity he also wrote four novels, which he managed to send to his wife in Poland; unfortunately they were destroyed in the firing of Warsaw. After liberation he went to London, where he rejoined the Navy. In the autumn of 1945 he volunteered to return to Poland as a courier of the Polish government in exile, travelling with a false identity, on a mission to make contact with the Polish underground. In Warsaw he was reunited with his wife and children and in December, once more using false papers, he successfully brought his family to London. After demobilization he had a variety of jobs, finally becoming a schoolteacher. He has written seventeen books on Polish politics and history, and three accounts of his life and adventures. As I write, he still lives in London and is now eighty-one years old.**
Airey Neave won French, American and Dutch awards for valor for his outstanding contribution to the Allied resistance during the war. When it ended he had the unique experience of serving the indictments on the surviving Nazi leaders for the Nuremberg trials. He later entered British politics, becoming a leading figure in the Conservative party during the 1970s and one of Margaret Thatcher’s most influential advisers. On 30 March 1979 he was tragically killed by a car bomb as he drove out of the House of Commons’ car park. Irish terrorists claimed responsibility for the assassination—the first in the parliamentary precincts since 1812.
Cenek Chaloupka returned to Czechoslovakia after the war and became a flying instructor with the Czech Air Force. Sadly, he was killed in a flying accident in 1946.
Unfortunately there has been little or no contact with the RAF Czechs since 1945 until very recently. One of them, Flight-Lieutenant Josef Bryks, who was shot down on 17 June 1941 and arrived in Colditz on 7 November 1944, returned to Czechoslovakia after the war. After the coup d’état in February 1948 he was dismissed from his command at Olomouc on 30 April of that year and was arrested by the Communists the following day. He was tortured, jailed and finally condemned to death. This was later changed to a life sentence, and he was sent to the notorious uranium mines at Jachymov in Bohemia. He died there, allegedly of heart failure.
Soon after the war he was awarded the MBE. He was not even allowed to come to Buckingham Palace to receive it.
/> Bush Parker, who joined No. 56 Operational Training Unit at Millfield, Northumbria, when the war was over, also lost his life when a plane he was piloting crashed on 29 January 1946. He was twenty-six years old.
After the war Solly Goldman emigrated to the USA. There he built up a retail business in Los Angeles, which was burnt down in the Watts riot of 1965. A bayonet wound in the stomach which he had received during the war never healed properly and in 1972 he died of its long-term effects. His unquenchable humor and spirit will never be forgotten by those who knew him in Colditz.
Florimund Duke has the following tailpiece to add to his Mission Sparrow adventure. A Hungarian officer called at American headquarters in Budapest one day in the summer of 1945. He returned safely the gold Louis d’Or entrusted by Duke to Major Kiraly. They were worth $6,000. The officer did not give his name and declined a receipt.
Reinhold Eggers returned to Halle when the war was over. This now lay in the Russian zone of Germany but, as Eggers could prove that he had never joined Hitler’s party, he was able to re-enter his former profession of teaching, immediately becoming a headmaster and soon after a lecturer at Halle university. In September 1946, however, he was arrested by the Russians and questioned about Gestapo agents at Colditz. Charged with crimes against humanity, spying and supporting a fascist regime, he was sentenced to ten years’ labor, which he served in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and Torgau prison. After his release he retired to live near Lake Constance and there he died in 1974, aged eighty-four.
The American Army relieved Colditz Castle on 16 April 1945. The Russian Army arrived in May and in due course the Americans retired to give Russia possession in accordance with the Yalta agreements.
There is now a commemorative plaque in black marble underneath the archway separating the outer and inner courtyards of the Castle. It reads:
THIS CASTLE SERVED IN 1933–34 AS AN INTERNMENT CAMP. HERE STARTED FOR MANY INFLEXIBLE ANTIFASCISTS THE PAINFUL JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS. THEY FOUGHT SO THAT WE MAY LIVE.
The deafening silence concerning the war years 1939–1945 betrays the cynicism of the Iron Curtain countries towards the free world.
Editor’s Note: Pat Reid was awarded the Military Cross in 1943 and the MBE in 1945. His experiences at Colditz served as the basis for a film (1955) as well as a television series (1972 to 1974). He died in 1990 at the age of seventy-nine.
* Editors were not able to verify further updates to this information as of publication.
** Giertych died in 1992, age eighty-nine.
APPENDIX 1
Colditz Prisoners and Staff
THE BRITISH CONTINGENT
Abbott, G. W.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
General List
Date of Capture
13.2.42
Arrived Colditz
8.1.44
Left Colditz
Aitken, A. H.
Rank
Captain
Regiment
NZEF
Date of Capture
28.11.41
Arrived Colditz
2.11.43
13.1.44
Left Colditz
22.11.43
22.3.44
Alexander, M.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
DCLI
Date of Capture
18.8.42
Arrived Colditz
11.1.43
Left Colditz
Allan, A. M.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
Cameron Highlanders
Date of Capture
10.6.40
Arrived Colditz
7.11.40
Left Colditz
Allen, G. R.
Rank
L/Cpl
Regiment
RUR
Date of Capture
4.6.40
Arrived Colditz
16.4.43
Left Colditz
11.5.44
Anderson, P. H.
Rank
Private
Regiment
NZEF
Date of Capture
26.5.41
Arrived Colditz
18.8.43
Left Colditz
3.4.44
Anderson, W. F.
Rank
Major
Regiment
RE
Date of Capture
30.5.40
Arrived Colditz
11.7.41
Left Colditz
Archer, L. R.
Rank
Sapper
Regiment
AEF
Date of Capture
1.6.41
Arrived Colditz
16.4.43
Left Colditz
13.12.44
Armstrong, G. R.
Rank
Corporal
Regiment
Calgary Tank Reg.
Date of Capture
19.8.42
Arrived Colditz
18.11.44
Left Colditz
Armstrong, R. B.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
DLI
Date of Capture
27.5.40
Arrived Colditz
10.8.41
Left Colditz
Arundell of Wardour, Lord J.
Rank
Captain
Regiment
Wiltshires
Date of Capture
23.5.40
Arrived Colditz
26.6.43
Left Colditz
18.4.44
(Repat. 6.9.44)
Ascott, F.
Rank
Private
Regiment
RAMC
Date of Capture
25.5.41
Arrived Colditz
18.8.43
Left Colditz
3.4.44
Bader, D.
Rank
W/Cdr
Regiment
RAF
Date of Capture
9.8.41
Arrived Colditz
16.8.42
Left Colditz
Bampfylde, A. G. H.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
Rifle Brigade
Date of Capture
26.5.40
Arrived Colditz
14.7.43
Left Colditz
Barnes, R. D.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
RNR
Date of Capture
6.7.40
Arrived Colditz
12.11.42
Left Colditz
Barnet, R.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
RN
Date of Capture
20.6.42
Arrived Colditz
12.11.42
Left Colditz
26.7.44
Barnett, J. M.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
RE
Date of Capture
22.5.40
Arrived Colditz
4.8.41
Left Colditz
26.7.44
(Repat. 6.9.44)
Barrott, T. M.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
Canadian Black Watch
Date of Capture
19.8.42
Arrived Colditz
26.6.43
Left Colditz
Barry, R. R. F. T.
Rank
Captain
Regiment
Ox. & Bucks
Date of Capture
28.5.40
Arrived Colditz
7.11.40
Left Colditz
Bartlett, D. E.
Ran
k
Lieut
Regiment
RTR
Date of Capture
29.9.41
Arrived Colditz
23.6.43
Left Colditz
Barton, H. E. E.
Rank
Lieut
Regiment
RASC
Date of Capture
20.5.40
Arrived Colditz
2.12.40
Left Colditz
Batelka, K.