Colditz (47 page)

Hauptmann Püpcke reported to the
Kommandant
that the POWs possessed national flags, and that the SBO had suggested, was it not the moment to hoist them? The
Kommandant
, seeing that German resistance appeared to be crumbling, agreed. Probably the greater fear at this moment was that of fire. An incendiary shell entering the POW quarters, on a steep trajectory, could have set the whole Castle alight.

So the Union Jack was hoisted above the
Kellerhaus
—the British quarters—and the French flag above the
Saalhaus
, with tremendous cheering from the POWs. The American heavy battery ceased fire soon after this.

As the morning advanced, American tanks and troops began infiltrating the town, both from the Lastau direction on the near side of the river, and from
across the Colditz bridge. The German battery retreated eastwards to avoid being surrounded. Colonel Tod placed armed British officers on guard inside the Castle gates.

The British, according to Holroyd, were regaled at regular intervals by radio news bulletins. The British radio must have been working. Dick Howe and Micky Burn were sending out bulletins to the prisoners about the American attack on Colditz as relayed by the BBC from American advance troops with radio transmitters. Thus the POWs were informed about both sides of the battle. Water and electricity had been cut off for some time, so that the radio electricity supply was provided by the “slave gang on the big wheel” (see my book
The Latter Days
).

Mortar fire was turning the town into burning rubble. Two
Panzerfäuste
(bazookas) were firing at short range on the bridge, trying to hold up the Americans. Then the welcome sound of infantry small arms and machine-gun fire was heard from the
Tiergarten
side. The Americans were closing in.

Tiles and shell fragments littered the prison courtyard.

By evening the town was surrounded, but the enemy had not surrendered.

Colonel Leo Shaughnessy's account of the battle is a clear-cut military report in concise and modest terms. The other reports all come from onlookers. Shaughnessy (from Carolina) was at the point of the spear, determining the battle.

He commanded the 3rd Battalion, the 273rd Infantry, in the 69th Infantry Division, under General Emil F. Reinhardt, part of the 1st US Army. His battalion had crossed the Rhine south of the Remagen bridge by boat, shortly after its capture by the 9th Armored Division on 7 March. Early in April they crossed the Fulda River, north of Kassel. Then his battalion was attached to Combat Command “R,” 9th Armored Division, commanded by Colonel Charlie Wesner. A task force was organized by attaching armored infantry, artillery and engineers. The task force was completely mounted on wheels or tanks.

There were several divisions operating abreast, each with five or six such task forces operating ahead, clearing the countryside of pockets of resistance, uncovering refugee groups and Allied POW camps.

Shaughnessy's task force took him on a line between Leipzig and Dresden. They lost a dozen men at Altengroitzsch, then reached the River Mulde at Wilderheim on 14 April. They were attacking Hohnbach on Sunday the 15th, when Shaughnessy received orders from Colonel Wesner to concentrate on Colditz, there to relieve “a large number of prisoners-of-war.” He adds, “Further information indicated there were V.I.P.s among them.” This was not, however, the main object or mission of the force. The force was part of the drive on Leipzig. Its primary role was to provide right-flank security for the troops attacking Leipzig.

Shaughnessy found himself by the observation post on the west bank of the river when the early artillery rounds were being zeroed in on the most prominent point on the other side. “This was,” he writes, “one of the towers of a large and imposing Castle.” Soon after several rounds had hit the Castle, “we observed three Allied red, white and blue flags appear at the upper windows of one of the buildings. This was the signal we needed to know that the Castle was where the prisoners of war were being held.”

Lieutenant Kenny Dobson was the artillery officer in charge of the battery which first spotted the Allied flags, just as he was about to bombard the Castle with high explosive followed by incendiaries.

Shaughnessy lost three first-rate platoon sergeants already recommended for battlefield promotion, and a number of wounded casualties before he had cleared the west bank of the river up to and around the road bridge by midnight of the 15th.

During that night what remained of the SS garrison departed eastwards, presumably fighting some kind of rearguard action—the cause of the small-arms and machine-gun fire from the
Tiergarten
area.

Soon after dawn American sections could be seen from the Castle proceeding under tank protection along the main street and down sideroads—entering houses as white flags went up. Terrified Germans came out with their hands up. One German, crossing the bridge, apparently did not stop when ordered and was shot instantly.

At about 10 a.m. on the 16th an infantry section (reconnaissance) of four men, advancing warily uphill, arrived at the gate of the Castle, which was immediately opened to them by the British guards, who had been placed there by the SBO. Their leader, Private First Class Alan H. Murphy (Bronze Star Medal) of New York State was the first American to enter Colditz. The other three were: Privates First Class Walter V. Burrows, 60th of Pennsylvania, Robert B. Miller, 60th of Pennsylvania, and Francis A. Griegnas, junior of New Jersey.

In the outer courtyard, all the German officers were paraded and disarmed. Eggers, being an English speaker, represented the German staff. He produced a complete list of POWs held, handing it over to Private Murphy. All the German officers remained on parade while Private Burrows escorted Eggers down the hill to report to his commander, Captain Hotchkiss.

The streets were empty. Here and there an American guarded an important place. On crossing the bridge Eggers saw the poor attempt that had been made to blow it up. On the far side lay three dead men of the
Volkssturm
, one of them only about seventeen years old, lying behind a primitive shelter of barrows and
barbed wire. “Even a hundred years ago this would not have stopped anyone,” Eggers thought.

What made them die like this? As we walked I saw what lay in store for our women as one was being dragged along by an American soldier who also had a whisky bottle clutched in his hand; she cried to me, “Help, help.” [Eggers' implication that the woman was about to be raped is uncorroborated.] We went into the last house in Colditz town where I saw the Captain in charge of the unit. He was satisfied that no prisoner was injured and told me to return and order everyone to stay there until a staff officer arrived to take the formal surrender. I went back with the Sergeant [
sic
]. People now began to leave their houses, one man came up to the Sergeant and told him where the Nazi
Kreisleiter
lived. The Sergeant told him to go back indoors as he didn't like this type of informer. He told me to inform all the people we saw that it was forbidden to leave their houses. So I returned to the castle.

Colonel Tod had only allowed a few officers to leave the inner courtyard during the Sunday and Monday morning on specific duties or as guards. Now he with other senior officers awaited the arrival of an American officer to take over the Castle.

In the meantime Private Murphy continued up the causeway and ordered the gate sentry (still with his rifle but no ammunition) to open up. As the gate opened, he walked through on the cobbles into a small patch of sunshine. His gaze wandered around the roof tops and high walls with the rows of barred windows and then down again to the yard, where a large number of officers were aimlessly walking around or standing in groups talking. Slowly their eyes turned towards the gate and slowly too they began to appreciate that this was no apparition standing before them. It was a real-live, heavily armed American GI. In the next instant all hell broke loose. Private Murphy was swamped by a milling onslaught of cheering, laughing, sobbing, shouting men.

I
N APRIL 1949 I ARRIVED
in Paris after a three-year stint in Ankara as a First Secretary at the British Embassy. I joined the diplomatic staff of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation—the OEEC centered in Paris.

One day, in the summer of 1950, during a polo tournament in the Bois de Boulogne, on the scoreboard recording the competing teams and the chukkas, I saw the name of P. Mairesse Lebrun. During an interval in play, I went to the players' changing rooms and asked for the whereabouts of Pierre.

He was seated, having removed his boots, and immediately recognized me. He rose and advanced to greet me, walking with the aid of a stick. It was nine years since his departure from Colditz in July 1941. I had to find out what had happened to him.

When Pierre crossed the Pyrenees in December 1942, he fell into the hands of the Spanish guards, was imprisoned in a lice-ridden and overcrowded prison in Pamplona and after a week transferred to a holding camp for illicit fugitives from France at Miranda, then after a period to Lerida with other officers of the regular French Army.

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.
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