by P. R. Reid
27.5.42
In place of a French orderly on working party.
Captain C. Kleln
25.11.42
Through German kitchen disguised as German soldier.
Lieut. A. Perrodeau
28.12.42
From courtyard, disguised as Willie Pönert (an electrician).
Lieut. J. Caillaud
8.4.43
Over the roof.
Lieut. E. Desbats
BELGIAN ESCAPES
SUCCESSFUL
Date
Method of Escape
Lieut. Louis Rémy
26.4.42
From hospital at Gnäschwitz.
TENTATIVE
Lieut. A. A. Devyver
21.7.42
Lieut. H. Vinckenbosch
9.42
Lieut. A. Verleye
APPENDIX 3
The Code
Sample Letter
Oflag IVC
Germany
Sept. 23rd 1941
Dear Aunt Sally,
I hope you are keeping well. Please write to me soon. Are the Smiths keeping fully active? Offer regards to Uncle Tom. Really he should talk to Henry! Sometime in the spring June will be seen as the mature and lovely girl everyone has expected. I wish Peter was more zealous and interested in the girl. He and she are the most suited couple in Petworth that I know of.
Try to find some clever ingenious way round their problem easily. Push and he’ll be driven eventually over the top like John and Mary. He really must open his eyes. Cliff and Kathleen should really enjoy their times in Brighton and Hove, and their little Albert loves it there too. Remember we came last year? Richard was away and I found a toad sitting on the garden seat. Just one single toad but he proved difficult to catch. Eventually I caught him and put him back in the pond out of the very hot sun. Memories! I look forward to more long hot summers like that one when this war is finally over.
Love
Archie
To be decoded using Frequency 23—see date
Spelling on or off—“the” or “and”
End of code sequence—“but”
First List
Final List
the
(start spelling)
fully
F
offer
O
uncle
U
FOURTH
1
really
R
talk
T
Henry
H
the
(end spelling)
June
JUNE
2
seen
SEEN
3
the
(start spelling)
lovely
L
everyone
E
I
I
Peter
P
LEIPZIG
4
Zealous
Z
interested
I
girl
G
and
(end spelling)
the
(start spelling)
suited
S
Petworth
P
I
I
try
T
SPITFIRE
5
find
F
ingenious
I
round
R
easily
E
and
(end spelling)
driven
DRIVEN
6
over
OVER
7
like
LIKE
8
and
(start spelling)
really
R
open
O
Cliff
C
Kathleen
K
ROCKET
9
enjoy
E
times
T
and
(end spelling)
and
(start spelling)
Albert
A
it
I
remember
R
came
C
Richard
R
AIRCRAFT
10
away
A
found
F
toad
T
the
(end spelling)
seat
SEAT
11
single
SINGLE
12
but
(end code sequence)
SINGLE
SEAT
ROCKET
DRIVEN
AIRCRAFT
LIKE
SPITFIRE
SEEN
OVER
LEIPZIG
JUNE
FOURTH
12
11
9
6
10
8
5
3
7
4
2
1
APPENDIX 4
An Exchange of Letters
between the Author and Professor R. V. Jones, Author of Most Secret War
London SW1
10 October 1983
Dear Professor
I wonder if you remember me and an exchange of letters which we had a few years ago, when your great book Most Secret War came out.
I related to you a story about how, in Colditz Castle as early as the winter of 1940/41, I read a little book about Rocket developments centred on the island of Rugen…. Now I come to the other end of the story! I am writing the complete history of Colditz for Macmillan and while doing research for this in the British Museum Library—I thought to look up Rocketry, and lo and behold I found a copy of “the little book” I read in Colditz!
I have had the important section of it photostated and I enclose a set of copies. The book was published by Pitman in 1935. It contains the names of all the great Rocketry scientists from Oberth downwards and also pinpoints the Island of Rugen (Peenemunde) as a Research base and with links in the OKW.
You mention on page 69 of your book: “… Peenemunde—the first mention we had ever had of this establishment.” I surmise this is about November 1939.
Would you be so kind as to write me, perhaps, a few lines of comment on the above which I might publish, of course with your approval, in my forthcoming book?
With my kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
Pat Reid
• • • • •
Professor R. V. Jones 25 October 1983
Dear Pat
… I know exactly how you must have felt in running that exasperatingly elusive book to earth after forty years.
I for one did not know of its existence and such knowledge could have helped to put us more on our toes in 1943. Only after we had done all the intelligence the hard way, in the autumn of 1944 did we discover Willi Ley’s Rockets and Space Travel which he had published in the 30s, and in which he described the early German rocket programme and the Verein für Raumschiffahrt.
One still puzzling aspect of Philp’s account is the Sunday Referee story of the man-carrying rocket ascent on Rugen in October/November 1933. I know of three German accounts of that period: Willi Ley’s (and I enclose a short excerpt from the 1951 edition of his book), Dornberger’s, and the Birth of the Missile by Klee and Merck, one of whom kept the Peenemunde archives. None of these mentions the Fischers or any trial in Rugen in 1933, which is very surprising. Indeed, according to Ley there was to have been a man-carrying demonstration at Magdeburg in 1933 but it turned out to be much too ambitious. The only details on which Le
y and the Sunday Referee agree are (1) 1933 and (2) the length of the rocket (25 feet, Ley, and 24 feet, Sunday Referee). I think that Ley is likely to be much the more reliable. It looks as though the Sunday Referee had picked up some garbled version of the Magdeburg story, but some of the details are convincingly circumstantial and the mention of Rugen is curious. Incidentally I enclose part of Ley’s bibliography which refers to Philp’s book, but describes it as “unreliable in detail!”
But even though it may have been unreliable in detail, Philp’s book (and Ley’s, for that matter) could have been valuable in alerting Allied Intelligence to what was going on in Germany, including such features as liquid oxygen, gyroscopic stabilization and radio control. Philp’s pages 78–80 (1st entry) and 95–97 (2nd entry) are astonishingly prescient. As he said, “It is almost beyond belief that in England until quite recently very little was officially known about rockets in 1935” and he would have been still more surprised to find how much longer official ignorance was to continue. It is a most telling example of the danger of official insensitivity to new ideas.
How fascinating it is that you had read Philp’s book in Colditz, and had remembered it in Berne. I know how maddening it must have been—you begin to wonder whether memory is playing false and whether you had imagined it or dreamed it instead. And then, after 40 years, your memory is vindicated.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
R. V.
PS Perhaps, in fairness to officialdom, it ought to be mentioned that it did not in fact prove sensible, so far as World War II was concerned, to concentrate effort on the development of large rockets, as the Germans did to their disadvantage.
The conclusion of this episode remains an intriguing “if” story:
All the time, throughout those painful years of the war, this “little book” containing its valuable information must have reposed untouched on its shelf in the British Museum Library. How might the knowledge it contained have saved lives and influenced the course of events “if” it had been found.
APPENDIX 5
Prisoners of War
in the Western Theaters of the Second World War
THE “INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War” was signed by most nations’ plenipotentiaries, including Germany’s and Japan’s, but excluding Russia’s, on 27 July 1929. Sir Horace Rumbold signed for the United Kingdom. It was a development arising out of the Hague Convention of 18 October 1907, concerning the Laws and Customs of War. The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth ratified it on 23 June 1931. Neither Russia nor Japan ratified it. Germany ratified on 21 February 1934. Significantly, Hitler came to power as German Chancellor on 19 August of that year. This presumably accounts for the Nazi claim that they were not bound by it.
As far as prisoners of war were concerned, up to that date there had been few, if any, rules of war to deal with them. The result was that they came off very badly, as the history of wars abundantly illustrates. I have written a book about this: Prisoners-of-war—the inside story of the POW from the ancient world to Colditz and after (published in the UK by Hamlyn). Traditionally, it was understood, if not openly taught, that you just did not allow yourself to become a prisoner. You fought to the death. Thus war ministries were not interested in making rules for prisoners when they possessed the stick of “fight to the death or suffer a living death if you are foolish enough to be captured.” The “carrot” was the glory and honor of a hero’s death. The French guard at Waterloo were offered quarter but refused, and died almost to a man.
Ever since the end of the Second World War, a question has been repeatedly posed: why did officers try to escape and why were they aided in this, whereas other ranks were not aided and did not try to escape?
Prisoners of war in the West were separated at the outset into two categories, and treated with more or less regard to the rules laid down for the conduct and incarceration of POWs by the Geneva Convention.
Officers went to officers’ prison camps, and other ranks went to troops’ camps. An important difference between the two was that troops were put to work for the enemy. That was permitted and no soldier could later be upbraided for working for the enemy. But an officer’s honor would have been deemed to be sullied for life and his allegiance to be in default if he worked for an enemy. Further, it was clearly understood by the signatories of the Convention that an Officer would and should consider it a matter of honor to attempt to regain his liberty and return to his fighting unit—in other words to escape. What followed was inescapable! The Geneva Convention permitted his captor to keep him locked up.
While troops went out daily from their moderately guarded cantonments to work—often unguarded—in factory or field, the officer was lucky to have an hour’s exercise in a barbed-wire pen surrounded by sentries before being returned to the closely guarded confinement of his quarters.
This introduction to the major difference in the form of imprisonment between officers and men leads naturally to a diagnosis of the psychology of escape. The first element is the “fear of the unknown.” It will hardly be contested that education tends to dispel or reduce the areas of the unknown to a man’s mind. The more educated (and that includes here “experienced”) a man is, the less are his fears of the unknown. To a prisoner, the vast area of enemy country surrounding him is the “unknown,” with all its bogeys and traps, which are emphasized by the enemy to attain nightmare proportions.
Some time ago, on a television program in which other-ranks ex-POWs were questioned, an ex-soldier admitted, “If I had tried to escape, I just wouldn’t have known what to do—I’d have been scared stiff at the idea of facing up to a 400-mile journey across enemy territory.” This man was expressing openly “fear of the unknown.” A more educated man might well have similar fears, but if he expressed them he could be accused of being chicken-hearted.
Two more psychological factors apply. The desire for freedom grows in inverse ratio to the amount of freedom one possesses. When a prisoner can go to work in a field under the open sky and return to his billet physically tired, he is almost a free man already, compared with his officer colleague who is pent up all day behind barbed-wire with no work to exhaust him, and with all the time in the world to consider his loss of freedom and how to regain it.
The other factor is a plain, healthy fear of retribution. Because troops do not have obligations to try to escape from enemy hands, they are considered by the enemy justifiably punishable if they do. The Germans in the Second World War lived up to this, with physical violence and, sometimes, a concentration camp as the end for a recaptured other rank.
As for officers in this context, the Geneva Convention laid down certain acceptable punishments. But, as Second World War history records, if an escaped officer on recapture got into the wrong hands, it could easily be “curtains”—a klimtin or Stufe drei.
There is no veracity in any conception of privilege being attached to the incarceration of officers in a closely guarded camp. Most officers, had they been given the option, would have opted for incarceration in a troops’ prison camp, whereas with other ranks the opposite would certainly not have applied. Many officers, after capture, regretted that they had not torn off their badges of rank and posed as other ranks.
There were often clandestine opportunities, which were naturally seized upon, for other ranks outside their camps to meet and have intercourse with women; this was denied officers permanently behind barbed-wire. Further, sexual frustration became an important incentive to escape in many cases.
Other ranks did try to escape but, as a proportion of the numbers who were POWs, the figure is small; and the percentage of those who succeeded is again small. Those who did succeed were very exceptional men. This is borne out by the stories recounted by Elvel Williams in a well-documented book about other ranks entitled Arbeits-Kommando (published by Victor Gollancz).
Assistance by way of escaping aids from the home country became largely a matter of
war economics. What had to be weighed up was the proportion and value of success relative to the amount of expenditure in time, money and effort to achieve it. There was no discrimination whatever in equipping Air-Force crews of all ranks with evasion kit. This was efficiently and cheaply accomplished at their home base. But when it came to getting escape kits into POW camps, this was another matter. It was not easy; it was expensive. If not well organized within the camp, losses were such that the game was not worth the candle. Correspondingly, war economics demanded that the more valuable personnel for the war effort should receive priority. This was recognized. Submarine officers were about on a par with “Mosquito” and Reconnaissance (aerial photography) pilots; ERAs of the Royal Navy were about on a par with Flight Sergeants; Army officers and other ranks were a low priority.