Colditz (67 page)

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.

However, an escape-minded other-ranker would have little difficulty in obtaining civilian clothing, legitimate currency, a local plan, a map, a railway timetable—all without assistance from the home front. With men like
Regimental Sergeant Major Sherriff at Lamsdorf, encouraging skillful assistance was always available.

The last point is that of leadership, or the absence of it. Other ranks, time and again, have stated how they missed it and needed it. With or without the Geneva Convention, any enemy taking prisoners will segregate officers from the men, for the very purpose of removing leadership. The only solution here is to use deception. The officer, the leader, should rip off his officer's insignia if he can do so, and become another ranker. Then he must organize his men for escape, while probably himself remaining the last to leave. This solution for an officer is to be commended, provided it is taken for commendable reasons. Some Russian officers in the Second World War were known to have gone into battle dressed as their men. But then German troops were known to shoot Russian officers at once—no quarter. The world knows what the Russians did with Polish officers at Katyn.

There is a lesson to be learned from an excellent treatise on the conduct of prisoners of war of many different nationalities in captivity during the Korean War from 1950–1953 entitled
Why They Collaborated
by Eugene Kinkead (published by Longman). In that war, officers, taken prisoner, were at once separated from their men. It transpired that both amongst officers and amongst men there were equally regrettable lapses from loyal or manly behavior under duress. But the redeeming feature that shines out, which transcended entirely the status—whether officer or other rank—of the prisoner, was discipline. Where there was discipline men and officers survived with honor. None exemplified this better than the 229 Turkish POWs. Amongst them, without officers, there was exemplary discipline, which started from a simple human concept: if there was no senior in rank amongst a group, then the oldest automatically became the senior. Obedience to the senior and total commitment to each other within the group, as well as total solidarity of the group vis-à-vis external forces, was their recipe for a successful outcome; and, in the event, so it proved to be.

It was generally believed that the Chinese feared the Turks to some degree, because they stuck together as a group and resisted as a group. Their discipline and military organisation saw them through as prisoners, with no fatalities and no indoctrination.

Therefore, let an officer who is contemplating the solution that is to be commended ask himself whether he will ultimately contribute to the escape proclivities of his men or to their self-preservation through discipline or to both.

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