Colditz (17 page)

The official notice was given out at morning
Appell
on 10 October that Surmanowicz had been given a four-year prison sentence. The only comforting aspect was that the war might not last the sentence out.

Admiral Unrug was indeed so incensed by what he considered the treachery of the
Kommandant
that he resigned the post of Senior Polish Officer. The
Kommandant
had assured the admiral that upon the culprit confessing his action the court would be lenient. Instead a fierce sentence of four years had been imposed. General Piskor took over the office of SPO; he ranked senior to the admiral anyway.

Meanwhile, four French lieutenants, Navelet, Odry, Charvet and Lévy, were conducted to the hospital at Elsterhorst attached to
Oflag
IVD. Pierre Odry, who
had helped Mairesse Lebrun to escape, had already tried a get-away. Nevertheless the
Tierarzt
had been convinced by their symptoms that they needed hospital treatment.
Oflag
IVD was a French POW camp and the hospital was strictly guarded. The four found no exit available.

On 14 October they set out under guard on their return journey to Colditz. They had to march three miles and it was already nightfall. The first part of this journey was over open country, then continued for a mile or so through the woods. They were, of course, under guard, but being hospital cases the guards presumably thought there would be no question of their being fit enough to escape.

At a given signal, while still in the woods, all four ran in different directions, and all four succeeded in getting clear away. Of the four, Charvet got to Kassel where he took a ticket to Aachen, but unfortunately changed there on to the wrong train and came back to Düsseldorf. Here by merest chance he met up with another of the four, Lévy, and the two travelled together back to Aachen and spent the night there in a wood. On the morning of the 18th they took a tram into the town, but unfortunately were caught. They said they were French other ranks and so were sent to the
Stalag
at Arnoldsweiler where they stayed for three weeks. During this time they told differing stories as to their identities, but in the end they let it be known as certain that they came from Oschatz in east Germany. On their way back there, Charvet jumped out of the train, but was seen and retaken at Helmstett. He then admitted that he was an officer prisoner and came from Colditz. He returned to Colditz without any further trouble, and when he got back there he found that Lévy had already been brought back as well.

Navelet and Odry eventually arrived safely home in France. This was Navelet's first attempt. For Pierre, it was his fourth.

At this time the
Kommandant
requisitioned about half a dozen cells in the town jail for use by POWs on “solitary” sentences. The queue had become so long for the seven odd cells in the
Schloss
that even placing two or three together in a cell, making nonsense of course of the term “solitary,” necessitated a long period of waiting between being served a sentence and actually carrying it out. The SBO was allowed to inspect the new accommodation. He approved it and Storie-Pugh (caught prospecting for an escape) was the first Britisher to have the privilege of using the accommodation.

On 25 October Mr. Giles Romilly arrived in Colditz by car under the guard of two German officers. A nephew of Winston Churchill, not by blood but by the marriage of his father, General Romilly, to the sister of Churchill's wife, he was captured at Narvik in the abortive Norwegian campaign. He was a journalist and was acting as correspondent for the
Daily Express
at the time. He was a
short, dark-haired young man with a boyish face and light-blue eyes. Padre Platt described him: “There is a restless look in his eyes and a droop of discontent at the corners of his mouth—indeed he is by no means a complacent young man.” The reason given for his transfer to Colditz was that he attempted an escape in female dress from an internment camp at Tost in Czechoslovakia. But this did not satisfy anyone. Colditz was a military special camp. Could this action carry an implication of the term “hostage”?

On consultation with the SBO, a complaint was submitted to the
Kommandant
next day asking for clarification of Romilly's position, as a civilian, in a military prison. In the meantime a German order was issued giving Romilly private sleeping accommodation in a cell, where he was to be locked in every night at 10 p.m. with a guard outside (and the usual spy-hole) until reveille time every morning when he would be allowed out. Romilly refused to obey the order to retire to his cell. So on Tuesday night a German squad led by Eggers appeared in the British quarters to remove him. Dressed in an RAF uniform he was not identified. The squad left and at 10:30 p.m. a general
Appell
was called. The British contingent was surrounded by guards with rifles at the ready—until Romilly was finally identified and removed to his cell with a posse of guards around him.

Eggers recounts the following about Romilly's advent: “He ranked as a
Prominenter
—a social prize (so our OKW considered) of some standing—maybe useful as a hostage. For us in Colditz he was just another security headache. Our instructions … came from the very highest source.” According to Eggers the orders came from Hitler. Furthermore he says that a German agent in Switzerland had reported that a rescue attempt was being organized by the Allies to free Romilly. This latter story has no traceable foundation in fact and may have been planted to keep security personnel on their toes. But the order concerning his imprisonment almost certainly did come from Hitler or Himmler. It specified that the
Kommandant
and security officer would answer for Romilly's security with their heads, and that his security was to be assured by any and every exceptional measure they cared to take. These were the measures taken:

1. Romilly's code name was to be “Emil.”

2. All members of the
Kommandantur
and guard companies were to familiarize themselves with Emil's appearance. (Photos were posted up in the guardroom, the
Kommandantur
, the office, etc.)

3. Anyone finding this man outside the prisoners' yard would take him at once to the
Kommandantur
.

4. The
Rollkommando
[roving search party] was to search him out every hour and note in a book where he was at that time.

5. By day he might move around the Castle where he wished.

6. No park walk. At every walk a special check to be made that Romilly was not with the group.

7. He was to be locked in his own room immediately after evening parades. A spy-hole to be put in the door, and a guard outside and the light burning all night (later just a blue light). The bed to be visible from the spy-hole.

8. His presence to be checked at night at irregular intervals.

For some months Giles reacted stubbornly to these special measures, especially the disturbance of his sleep. He used to fling his boots against the door and put paper over the spy-hole, but in the end he accepted these inconveniences. He spoke good German and certainly played his part in undermining the morale of the guards, with whom he could converse easily at his door at any time of the evening and night.

Romilly's escape as a female was from a place called the Wulzburg. It was a castle in Bavaria where there were hundreds of civilian internees. But Romilly was kept separate most of the time. When recaught he did his time at Eichstatt then went to Tost, near Breslau, in Silesia. From there he came to Colditz. A month after his arrival, 28 November, he tried to make an escape by disguising himself as an orderly. He was helping to load a cart when Priem, tipped off by the guards that he had disappeared, approached the loading team and accosted him, saying, “You should leave this work for men of lower breed!”

The first snow of that winter fell on 3 November and the first pangs of hunger began to be felt by the German command in Colditz. The OKW cut the rations for all officers of the home Army. The weekly ration of meat, for instance, was cut from 800 to 400 grams. We cheered ourselves up with the first, and possibly the best, revue produced by the British contingent. Called “Ballet Nonsense,” it had its stage premiere on 15 November. Here is Padre Platt's description of the opening number:

… five strapping fellows of muscular hairy limbs were dressed in ballet skirts of crinkled paper, and each with a blazing red brassiere on a brawny bear-like chest. Three of the five wore mustaches! The curtain lifted on kneeling figures, bare backs to the audience, and arms engaged in sinuous
graceful movement. A crashing swell from the band brought them to their feet dancing, and face to face with the now rocking audience. Pat Reid was the prima ballerina.

In the same month, the first British escape committee was formed. I had asked the SBO if something could be organized and Guy German gave me the go-ahead. The SBO himself was only to participate as chairman for the most important decision-making. For escaping purposes, he felt that the less he knew the better. So, by an election held in the day-room, Captain Dick Howe, Squadron-Leader Malcolm McColm and Lieutenant Airey Neave were appointed to help me in running the escape organization of the British contingent. Captain Kenneth Lockwood was appointed to concentrate on “hides” because serious losses had been incurred in searches due to a great deal of laxity as well as inefficiency on the part of individuals in concealing contraband.

This was of course an expression of our frustration at the lack of success in escaping. Padre Platt, in his diary entry for 6 December, claimed to find two more:

For the past few weeks life has been Novemberish, flat and barren. Officers have drawn up their stools to the chess board and a new departure, a high-stake poker school, is flourishing. Teddy Barton was winning Rm1700 the other day. I suppose there is a thrill in winning £113, and something the reverse of monotony in losing it; but neither excitement contributes much to communal life beyond the opportunity to rag one another.

Two of our number, on several nights since the “Ballet Nonsense” revue have sat up after all the others were abed discussing Plato's acquiescence in the homosexualism of his disciples. At one of these late-adolescent discussions they foresaw themselves as founders of a Platonic cult. Actually homosexualism has advanced little since March; it is still in the coarse humour stage.

The answer to foregoing is the fact that the true life of IVC is in a state of hibernation, i.e. the escape season is virtually closed.

The French Lieutenant Michel Girot, the youngest French officer in Colditz, made his first attempt to escape on 25 November. He tried to pass through the main gate dressed as an orderly bearing a faked-up message. He had not gone far before he was recaptured. This attempt has been registered by Eggers together with the date. Girot did not know then the road he had embarked on,
which ended with his fifth escape by tunnel from the infirmary in Lübeck on 27 April 1944.

The news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came on 8 December. The declaration of war by Britain against Finland, Hungary and Romania and the declaration of war by the USA and Britain on Japan were reported within hours. Then on 11 December came the news that Germany and Italy had declared war on the USA and, finally, news of the catastrophic sinking of the two British battleships
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
by the Japanese on the 10th.

Two weeks before Christmas the Germans had a field day. That day the party for the park was rather large and more than usually unruly, particularly when being counted before the march back. The NCOs were suspicious and checked very carefully. The officer in charge, Priem, suddenly spotted the reason. He confronted the Dutch section of the parade. “All from here to the right, move to the right. All from here to the left, move to the left.”

That left one file standing, plus an extra man to the right, in a file of his own. Why hadn't he moved? This Dutch officer was a dummy! After that the Germans counted again and there were two missing. They then put the dogs into the exercise area and under an untidy heap of leaves, the dogs unearthed Lieutenants Kruimink and Douw van der Krap. The leaves were sewn meticulously on to a sheet, forming a good camouflage over a shallow hollow formed by improving a natural dip in the ground surface.

What had happened over the counting was that two dummies were being employed. As soon as the first dummy was exposed, there was no point in risking the second.

Only four days later, on 16 December, two German officers presented themselves at the yard gate. The guard let them out and saluted. They marched off left downhill towards the next archway. The guard was slow. He locked the door and then thought of the passes. Orders were to demand all passes at all gates from all military personnel. He didn't want to leave his post. Still, he was suspicious and ran after the officers and asked for their
Ausweise
. “That's all right, we're coming straight back,” was the answer, in good German. But not good enough. The guard was called out and stopped Lieutenant Baron D. W. van Lynden and Captain Steenhouwer.

As if these escapes were not sufficient to belie Padre Platt's diary entry about the escape close season setting in, the French had a real go with three officers on 17 December.

That day leave postings for the German garrison went up. Half of the officers had the 22nd to the 28th, but Eggers' leave was again over the New Year. He had
been in Colditz for just over twelve months now and had indeed something to look back on. The
Kommandant
, sixty-nine years old, was on a month's sick leave. His deputy, Oberstleutnant von Kirchbach, was an officer with whom the staff all got on very well. He had lost an arm in the First War and was no stickler for discipline. The garrison soldiers were looking forward to their Christmas party that night.

Sure enough, for dinner the quartermaster officer did them proud, even though belts were tightening. After the meal, a show was put on by the troops. The guard company provided music and song, and a series of sketches poking fun at the officers or “dragging them through the cocoa” as the Germans say.