Colditz (22 page)

The Dutch had now been cleared from their quarters and counted, and there was complete silence outside the chamber. Then a German was climbing up the buttress inside. He must have had crampons. The tunnellers threw everything they could by way of debris at him down their chute entrance. They burnt incriminating papers and materials and threw them down. Still he persevered. So they decided to break out through the secret sealed entrance, only to be confronted by a German guard. The Germans then made a big haul of escape paraphernalia, including dummies and uniforms, from the chamber.

This period saw a further blow to the prisoners' supplies of contraband. One of the German censors worked in the book trade in Leipzig. In the early part of 1942, he noticed that the covers of some of the books that he was handling seemed rather thicker than usual, especially as paper was in short supply all over the world. At his suggestion the covers of half a dozen books sent by the Prisoners' Leisure Hour Fund from Lisbon were opened up. They were found to contain in every case either 100-mark notes, or maps on silk of, for example, the Swiss frontier, the Yugoslav frontier, the Dutch and Belgian frontiers, the layout of Danzig harbor, and so on. They even found tiny hacksaw blades and compasses in these covers as well. Eggers said that it then struck them that they had recently received and passed on to individual prisoners several other parcels from this same source in Lisbon. So, something had to be done. At least these books had to be taken back. That meant a visit from Eggers to the British library.

The British librarian was now Padre Platt. Eggers went over to the prisoners' library and got Platt to give him back several of these Lisbon books. Eggers said he wanted them for “statistical purposes.” Some of these books were out on loan to readers, but Platt promised to get them back.

Back in the censor's office it was found that the books that had been collected also had unusual covers with valuable contents. But when Eggers got the rest of the books that afternoon, he found that the covers had all been cut open and emptied, and the endpapers stuck back on again. Quite naturally the British realized what Eggers was after, and removed the contraband from what till then had been a first-rate hiding place. Eggers concludes:

From then on, no book covers at all were allowed, and to save ourselves trouble we put it through to the OKW, and they agreed with us, that the
prisoners should be allowed to receive only books with paper backs. For once there was no argument in Colditz.

Under a new order in March all
Antrags
(requests) of a general nature had to be submitted to four representatives of the
Kommandant
who sat in the
Evidenzzimmer
for that purpose at 3 p.m. on Wednesdays. Padre Platt attended with Colonel Stayner, the new British SBO since the departure of Colonel German, to enquire about the stopping of the non-combatants' walks. For answer he was not told, as he had expected to be, that they were now foregone because Le Guet and Jean-Jean had escaped from one, but that a recent OKW order declared that British chaplains were now to be regarded as combatant officers. Platt commented: “this ruling surely awards to weary chaplains the privilege and excitement of engaging in escape rackets and making good the racket should opportunity occur. I think it is rather a good exchange!”

In mid-March the British had a small new intake: Lieutenants Michael Sinclair and Grismond Davies-Scourfield and Major Ronald Littledale (somewhat later as he was held in hospital in Czechoslovakia), all of the 60th King's Royal Rifles. These three had escaped from the reprisal fort at Posen on 28 May 1941. Sinclair and Littledale had been in Poland, where they were looked after by the Polish Underground. They were eventually passed on and ended up in Bulgaria. After five months of freedom they were caught and handed back by the Bulgarians to the Germans. Grismond remained at liberty for nine months in Poland.

On 16 March Flight-Lieutenant Peter Tunstall and flying Officer Dominic Bruce arrived from
Oflag
VIB.

Doktor Rahm, the German camp doctor, came into prominence once more at this time. The sickroom tunnel, in which Airey Neave had once been involved, had progressed quite a distance under the parcel office when it was betrayed to the Germans on 18 March by a Ukrainian orderly. The orderly was badly beaten up by the Poles, and Rahm was furious that allegedly sick patients, treated by him with care and consideration, should take advantage of their situation. He closed this lower “cellar” sickroom, transferring the beds to another room on the first floor on the park side of the Castle.

On 25 March Admiral Unrug and General Le Bleu were scheduled to leave Colditz after the morning
Appell
; General Le Bleu for the generals' camp IVB at Königstein and Admiral Unrug for camp VIIIE at Johannesbrun in Czechoslovakia. So the Polish and French contingents all remained in the courtyard after
Appell
to give their Senior Officers a good send off.

On that same morning, news had come through of the court-martial verdict on Verkest the day before. Verkest pleaded guilty and was awarded a three-year sentence for “disobedience” on the “saluting” count. However, during the
procès
Verkest revealed in cross-examination that the whole Belgian Colditz contingent, thirty-three of them, had agreed together to refuse to salute; and according to Eggers:

They had also passed a resolution [not to salute] concerning those members of the Belgian Armed Forces who had given their parole to us and returned to freedom. The Court held this, as well as the group refusal to salute, to be an “agreement to disobey orders concerning duty matters,” and therefore mutiny. Verkest was sentenced to death, in spite of Naumann's pleadings. Sentence was suspended for three months. The Head of State must confirm it.

While the Poles and the French were waiting in the yard, Stabsarzt (Surgeon-Major) Rahm entered through the main gate, the “eye of the needle.” He was always punctual. It was exactly 9 a.m. Many officers were walking round. With a large number of potential salutes before him, he scented blood. The “horse doctor” made straight for the nearest group, whose attitude promised a rich harvest. The group split in two, one going towards the left-hand door, the other to the right. Rahm went after the group on the left, but they had disappeared through the door, leaving him alone in that corner. The other group had followed, shouting “
Tierarzt, geh' nach Moskau!
(go to Moscow!)” and other insults. Those prisoners in their rooms crowded the windows.

Rahm turned and rushed at his assailants, but they in turn disappeared through the right-hand door just as the first group reappeared and recommenced their shouts, backed up by the spectators at the windows. “
Tierarzt, T-i-e-r-a-r-z-t!
”

This continued until the German duty officer arrived, followed by the inevitable Riot Squad (party of Goons with fixed bayonets called to a trouble spot). He cleared the courtyard. The
Tierarzt
, still suffering booing from the windows, made his way to the sick-bay.

Not all the prisoners approved of this demonstration; among them Colonel Stayner and Padre Platt. The first consequence was the stopping of the park walk. Major Engles for the Dutch and Colonel Stayner for the British made a joint complaint that their officers were not in the
Hof
at the time, and the exercise ban should not therefore apply to them. The
Kommandant
agreed. But when Stayner acquainted British officers with these findings, it was pointed out that certain
of the British contingent did share in the demonstration from the windows of their quarters, and had no wish to receive treatment discriminating them from their fellow-prisoners. Whereupon the colonel drew up another
Antrag
in which he disclosed to the
Kommandant
that British officers had shared in the demonstration after all, and that he wished to withdraw his plaint. He then repeated to the British his disapproval of shouting and booing, and hoped that officers might not be found doing so again.

At about this time (March), Colditz had one of its periodic visits from members of the International Red Cross. They came to see that all was well with the supply, either indirectly, or as directed by them, of food parcels to the prisoners from the different Allied countries on the one hand, or from relatives on the other.

Food parcels were more or less standardized in weight to about ten pounds each. They came from different countries and the British prisoners received them from England, Australia, Canada and the United States, in bulk. Besides food, the Red Cross also sent bulk consignments of cigarettes and tobacco for distribution among the inmates of the camps. From 1941 onwards the supply of parcels of different kinds was regular enough to keep all the British prisoners decently clothed, and sufficient also to provide one food parcel per fortnight for each prisoner, as well as about forty cigarettes a week.

In addition, four private parcels could be sent per annum to each prisoner, from families or friends, and the Germans controlled the arrival of these parcels by an arrangement whereby they might only be sent against a special type of label which was issued in the permitted quantity to the person authorized. Private parcels usually contained clothing or books. Cigarette parcels were also allowed to individuals in unlimited quantity.

The French received food parcels mainly from private sources, but they did have a certain amount of bulk supply in the form of what they called
singe
or “monkey,” which was tinned meat from their Army reserve. It came from Madagascar. They also had large quantities of
Biscuits Pétains
, French Army biscuits, which they exchanged with the British for cigarettes at the rate of one for one. The Poles and Dutch had private food parcels but in no such quantity as the British supplies, so that they were not particularly well off for food or clothes or cigarettes at any time during the war.

From 1942 onwards most of the Colditz prisoners were nearly as well fed as the German civilians in the town, at least as regards calorie intake. They had chocolate, sugar, butter, tinned meat and dried food in quantities. They made wine from their sugar and raisins and distilled from this wine a highly
intoxicating alcohol which they called firewater. What they did lack, of course, was fish and fresh fruit.

All the parcels, together with the mail, were subjected to a strict censorship on the German side. They were after contraband. Eggers states categorically:

We never on any occasion found any contraband, or anything that could be described as contraband, in the bulk supplies which came from, or through, the International Red Cross. We did, however, find a tremendous amount of forbidden goods in private clothing parcels and in private food parcels, in particular, those which came from France. We also found a lot of contraband in the “Welfare” parcels which were sent out from England either individually or by undercover organizations.

The Germans were late in the contraband stakes. Now they began to take a much closer interest in parcels from sources other than the International Red Cross. They installed an X-ray apparatus and subjected every incoming object without exception to its revealing gaze. They found in particular that the Licensed Victuallers' Sports Association was effectively helping to replenish the prisoners' stocks of escape material. Hollow-handled tennis rackets contained tiny compasses and hacksaw blades. Gramophone records contained maps and yet more money in the center. Playing cards had maps inside them. Jumping ahead in time, when Wing Commander Douglas Bader arrived in 1943, his chess set produced 1,000
Reichsmarks
, three compasses and seven maps!

The Germans felt that this X-ray machine would soon put a stop to all this, but while it blocked one smuggling route used by the British, it merely served to open another and better one for both the English and the French.

On Good Friday, 3 April, there was a lightning search of the British quarters in the late afternoon. The stooges had failed on their job. This time the Germans suddenly erupted from the
Evidenzzimmer
door which was close to the British quarters staircase door. The stooges had focused their attention on the main gate. How had they failed? According to Platt, the Germans had entered the
Evidenzzimmer
in small groups at various intervals during the day. When the groups came out, each group left one behind, whose absence was not noted. This story is to be doubted. It is more likely the Germans used a secret passage which they had constructed from their quarters into the
Evidenzzimmer
. Eggers says he can't recall that they ever used this route (he may have been away on leave at this period), but having gone to the trouble of
building the route why should they use the clumsy, time-consuming method suggested by Platt?

The only notable outcome of the search was that Flying Officer “Errol” Flynn was caught at work on a new tunnel. He had only come out of solitary the previous day after twenty-eight days for a three-day break before a second twenty-eight days he was due to serve for making a break while on his way to the cells. This new tunnel offense would earn him a further twenty-eight days. This brought his total to 170 days with previous sentences accumulating.

The chapel was still closed at Easter due to the French tunnel repairs—so the Easter Catholic services were held in the courtyard. The weather was kind. Platt records:

Their services were in Latin. The Protestants or sectarians celebrated their Easter without saints and song, and much more simply. They had their own services, each in his own quarters and each in his own tongue. The Jews in Colditz had apparently no particular observance of the day of this Christian feast. There was no Rabbi among them anyway.

Then on 8 April five French Jewish doctors of the Jewish contingent were sent off to work in Russian POW camps in Poland to deal with typhus epidemics (cholera was also rumored). According to War Office records, during the winter of 1941–1942 typhus, thought to have been brought in by Russian prisoners, broke out in six POW camps where British prisoners were held.