SAS Great Escapes

by Damien Lewis

  Days passed, and Paterson still hadn’t been executed. Instead, he was informed that as they were parachutists, the Operation Colossus captives were to be treated as Air Force POWs – prisoners of war. When they were sent to an Italian airbase, as a temporary holding camp, conditions dramatically improved. The commanding officer there, a Colonel Montalba, appeared to be a compassionate, principled individual. He ensured they had decent food, a bath every second day and that they were allowed exercise. Essentials such as toothbrushes, soap and towels were even provided.

  But when Colonel Montalba wasn’t around, the Questura continued their pursuit of the Colossus raiders. One morning, a Questura photographer and finger-printing expert arrived. Pritchard refused to cooperate, stating that they were prisoners of war, not common criminals. On returning to his base, a furious Colonel Montalba tore apart the Questura’s equipment, smashing the photographer’s plates and his camera, plus the finger-printing kits.

  After three weeks of this relatively benign existence, the prisoners were summoned into Colonel Montalba’s office. With great cheer he announced they were to be moved to a camp in the mountains, at Sulmona. It promised magnificent scenery, excellent food and plenty of wine and cigarettes, as well as the company of their fellow British POWs, Colonel Montalba declared. It was regrettable, he added, that the only thing they would not be allowed was the company of women!

  In due course Paterson and his fellow POWs travelled by train through snowy peaks and dense pine forests, with only the occasional village breaking up the scenery. Finally, the small town of Sulmona came into view. Guarded by thirty-five Carabinieri, the Colossus captives were taken on a five-mile march to the prison gates. Upon arrival, they were confined to cramped cells with little to do, and with no fellow POWs for company. The men became irritable and downhearted. Colonel Montalba’s promises of the good life – of fine food, wine, company and song – seemed to have been wildly exaggerated.

  Several weeks into their incarceration at PG 78 Sulmona, a Colonel Fisk from the American Embassy, in Rome, arrived to check they were being treated fairly. Paterson and the others pleaded with him to get them moved to somewhere they could exercise and where they could mix with fellow POWs. Shortly afterwards, they were transferred to the officers’ compound. The huts there were bigger, there was space to exercise, but best of all, they were finally among their fellow captives. Paterson was assigned a bed in a hut called ‘Dominion House’, which housed Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and British among its number.

  In his new surroundings, Paterson learned that their Italian captors even provided each POW with half a litre of wine per day. Most saved up the wine over several days, in order to throw a special party. But at Dominion House the inmates had got into the habit of drinking all the wine they could right away. With Paterson on hand, there was hope that they might rely on the Big Canadian’s self-discipline and iron will to curb their excessive boozing, and he was duly appointed Dominion House Wine Secretary.

  With Paterson’s strictures over the wine ration rigorously imposed, escape became uppermost on the captives’ minds. But with Sulmona lying four hundred miles from the Swiss frontier – neutral Switzerland offering the nearest promise of safety – those few who had previously attempted to escape had all been recaptured and returned to the camp.

  Even so, the men of No. 11 SAS – Britain’s first ever airborne forces, who were all volunteers for hazardous duties – remained undaunted. They had been subjected to months of harsh ‘commando style’ training in Britain, plus the rigours of learning parachute jumping, including from static towers, tethered balloons and aircraft; they were in no mood to sit out the remainder of the war as POWs.

  At Sulmona Paterson befriended an RAF fighter pilot called Garry Garrad-Cole, among other POWs. Garrad-Cole asked him if he’d like to join an escape attempt they were planning. Paterson, fired up by the thought of some action at last, replied: ‘You’re damn right I would!’

  Garrad-Cole had managed to escape once before, in the company of a naval lieutenant. They had reached Italy’s eastern – Adriatic – coast but had been caught in the process of stealing a boat to make good their getaway. The plan of escape now was to dig a tunnel leading from inside the broom cupboard of their hut, out under the camp’s perimeter. Garrad-Cole showed Paterson where several floor tiles had been removed, revealing a dark and narrow shaft. Each day the excavated soil was passed around the hut inmates, before being discreetly dribbled out via their trouser legs and scattered around the camp.

  Over the coming day, the tunnel excavation progressed well, and Paterson felt his spirits lift in anticipation of the break-out. But one morning a mule, loaded with supplies, suddenly disappeared down a large hole, as it made its way along the path running just outside the camp perimeter. Within minutes, the escape shaft had been discovered.

  Even so, Paterson and Garrad-Cole weren’t inclined to give up. Some weeks later they managed to execute a daring dash past the wire, but Paterson only got as far as a ditch, before some angry farmers descended upon him with their hunting rifles at the ready. Garrad-Cole was also quickly recaptured. Sentenced to thirty days’ solitary confinement, by the time they were released rationing within the camp had become severe. The Italians, realising that the war was unlikely to be over anytime soon, had switched the prisoners’ diet to a few slices of stale black bread and a watery vegetable stew.

  The weeks passed, and Paterson and his fellow prisoners grew increasingly despondent. They seemed to be permanently plagued by hunger and could foresee no opportunities for breaking out. Finally, all of the Special Forces officers were brought before the Colonel of Sulmona POW camp. He informed them that as they were the main instigators of all the escape attempts, they were to be shipped off to another place of incarceration, one that was far more secure.

  Following a long train journey under close guard, Paterson and his fellows arrived at an ancient, glowering monastery in the town of San Romano, central Italy. The monastery had been split into two, with one section still occupied by the monks, but the other walled off and tightly patrolled. Inside, there were some fifty Greek POWs, who greeted the new arrivals warmly. Despite their lack of a common language, the Greeks immediately offered to share their Red Cross food parcels with the newcomers, who they could see were half-starved.

  His spirits somewhat reinvigorated, Paterson once again began considering thoughts of escape. During the first few weeks at their new place of internment, he carefully studied the POWs’ section of the building, but every conceivable exit was covered by rifle-posts and machine-gun emplacements. However, the monks’ quarters, on the far side of a bricked-off corridor, remained unexplored.

  One of Paterson’s fellow Operation Colossus raiders decided to attempt a reconnaissance of the monks’ quarters, by pronouncing himself a Roman Catholic and demanding that he be allowed to attend services in the chapel. Under heavy guard he began his daily visits, each time gathering vital intelligence of the monastery’s layout. From this information Paterson, an engineer by trade, drew up an accurate plan of the building. It revealed that behind the bricked-off corridor separating the POWs from the monks lay a rarely used cloister – a covered walkway. If they could remove a few bricks, they might be able to slip into the cloister and make good their getaway.

  It was a sound plan, but they would need a distraction to cover the racket made by chiselling away the bricks. A few weeks back the Greeks had gathered together enough wine and goodies from the Red Cross parcels to throw a party in honour of St George, the patron saint of England. Now, Paterson and his fellow escapees figured it was time to return the gesture with a party all of their own. With luck, the drunken singing would provide the perfect cover as they excavated a hole in the wall.

  Over the next fortnight they got busy. Identity cards that might pass a fleeting inspection were cleverly forged. Clothing was shared around and careful alterations made to enable th
e men to blend in as civilians in the outside world. Routes were planned and money put aside.

  The evening for the party arrived. Paterson played his role as the genial host, passing around the wine to intoxicate the Greeks – who were known to be enthusiastic singers – while remaining stone-cold sober himself. Behind the scenes, others got busy attacking the wall. After a short while they succeeded in getting one brick free. They reported to Paterson that it was tricky to break the mortar without making too much noise, but that they should be ready in an hour or so.

  With the party in full swing, word reached Paterson that the hole was nearly big enough. It was time for Paterson and the group of British officers to slip away unnoticed. They raced for their rooms to make their final preparations, disguising themselves as best they could as civilians. No sooner had they done so than Lieutenant Deane-Drummond, one of Paterson’s fellow Operation Colossus raiders, came tearing down the corridor.

  ‘It’s all off!’ Deane-Drummond cried. ‘One of the bloody monks heard a brick drop and decided to investigate. He’s just yelled for the guard. They’ll be here in minutes. Hide everything incriminating and let’s get to bed.’

  Paterson, Deane-Drummond and the others had barely slipped under the sheets, when the Carabinieri came storming into their rooms, announcing that there had been an escape attempt. Paterson protested their innocence, claiming that none of them had been involved. The accusations were deeply unjust, for they were all fast asleep, he insisted. Paterson’s play-acting would have succeeded had it not been for one of the Carabinieri discovering his carefully drawn plans of the monastery, hidden under his bedside table.

  As punishment, Paterson was marched off for a month’s solitary confinement. He told himself, ruefully, that perhaps the peace and quiet would do him good. But he wasn’t to be alone for long. Most of the British officers joined him, as the Italian guards decided to punish them all. Even so, Paterson remained determined to break out.

  The first of the Operation Colossus raiders to do so would be Lt Deane-Drummond. Faking mastoiditis – an infection of the bone behind the ear – Deane-Drummond got himself moved to Florence Military Hospital. Early one morning he managed to sneak past his guard on the ward and catch a train to Milan, some three hundred kilometres north and that much closer to Switzerland. From there he travelled on to Como, which lies on the Italian side of the Swiss border, and managed to slip across the frontier.

  Having made it into neutral Switzerland, Deane-Drummond proceeded to cross the border into France, in the company of some fellow escapees, making his way to an isolated beach lying some twenty miles east of the French port city of Marseilles. It was there that a small British naval vessel, disguised as a Spanish fishing trawler, managed to land during the dead of night and rescue them all.

  But Deane-Drummond’s successful breakout, coupled with the escape attempts of Paterson and fellow POWs, turned the attitude of the Italian camp guards distinctly hostile. Come late summer, Paterson and fellows were informed they were to be transferred to Gavi, a camp twenty miles north of the city of Genoa. Supposedly escape-proof, it was at the Gavi camp that the most mutinous and restive Allied prisoners were held.

  On their arrival, Paterson could see why. Perched high on one side of the mountain was an ancient fortress, surrounded by sheer drops on all sides and accessed by a narrow winding road. Each wall of the fortress was lined by machine-gun posts and squads of patrolling guards. By now, Paterson had been in captivity for eighteen months, and the very sight of the Gavi camp sent his spirits plunging. But, he reminded himself, nowhere was one hundred per cent escape-proof. There had to be a way.

  During the long months of incarceration, Paterson had learned to adapt to his circumstances. Keeping mind and body active was key. Learning languages, mathematics, art – anything, so long as it didn’t give the mind too long to brood. At Gavi, he busied himself with Italian, and they even managed to organise a drama club and a casino to pass the days.

  As the months ground by, fresh POWs arrived, bringing encouraging news of the war. The battle for North Africa had been won, and Sicily had been taken by Allied troops. Then came news that was like a bolt from the blue. Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator, was removed from power. Seeing which way the wind was blowing in the war, Italy’s leaders had signed an armistice with the Allies on 3 September 1943. When this was made public on the 8th, most of the Italian guards at Gavi seemed euphoric. They announced that the war would soon be over and they would all be going home.

  Gavi’s fearsome machine-gun posts were left unmanned and the sentry boxes unattended, as guards and prisoners mingled in celebration. With the gates left unguarded, all the prisoners could have walked out, but they’d received word via secret channels that they should stay where they were, the better to assist with their repatriation in due course. Sadly, this ‘stay put’ order, instigated by Allied high command, would backfire catastrophically.

  As morning came, the jovial atmosphere evaporated. When Paterson gazed out from the fortress, he realised that the guards were back at their posts. More chillingly, he could see the distinctive grey uniforms of a unit of German troops moving through the valley below.

  ‘We will be shot if any of us let you go,’ confided one of the Italian guards, dejectedly.

  The routine at Gavi returned to what it had been before, while the German forces remained in position, to pressure the Italians into keeping a close watch. Then, in mid-September 1943, the Germans dismissed the Italian guards and moved into the fortress themselves. The prisoners were told to prepare to be moved early the next morning. Paterson and his fellow detainees realised this could mean only one thing: they were about to be shipped to Germany, the very last place they wanted to go.

  Desperate to escape, several tried to hide in out-of-the-way-sheds, cupboards, attics and disused storerooms, only to be discovered. Their last-ditch attempts delayed the journey for twenty-four hours, but no more. Finally the prisoners were lined up and strip-searched, before being loaded aboard a convoy of trucks. As the POWs sat there, silent and downcast, Paterson knew that once they were in Germany there would be little chance of ever breaking away.

  After travelling all day, the convoy pulled into a freight yard in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. There, they were ushered into a goods warehouse, where several hundred POWs were crammed together. Word reached Paterson that they were to be taken by train over the Brenner Pass, the dramatic mountain chasm that straddles the border between Italy and Austria, and onwards into Germany. Paterson realised that their worst nightmare was about to begin.

  Under the hot September sun it seemed like an eternity before they were marched towards a long line of goods wagons. Interspersed between them were groups of heavily armed SS troopers, who would be riding in open vans. Once Paterson and the others had been herded inside the wooden-sided carriages, the doors slid shut and were locked tightly closed.

  With a sharp blast on the whistle, the train lurched forward. Inside Paterson’s wagon, it was hot, airless and very nearly dark. As the locomotive steamed northwards, the men’s hunger began to stir. From Red Cross supplies they’d brought with them they pulled out whatever biscuits, raisins and chocolate remained. It wasn’t long before the conversation turned to escape.

  One of those riding on that train was Major David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, who had been taken prisoner while on operations in the North African desert in January 1943. Stirling had escaped almost immediately from his German captors but was quickly retaken by a force of Italian troops, who delighted in having got one over on their German brothers-in-arms by recapturing ‘The Phantom Major’, as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had dubbed Stirling.

  Stirling would go on to make repeated escape attempts, and he and Paterson had become friends in the Italian POW camps, bonding over their shared desire to be free. In short, the determin­ation to break out from that train, as it steamed north towa
rds Germany, was palpable, and the conversation ebbed back and forth about how best they might do so. Finally, a group of South African POWs figured it was worth seeing if they could cut a hole through the wooden planking that formed the carriage’s sides.

  ‘Anyone manage to bring a knife?’ someone ventured.

  One man handed over a small pocket-knife, while another produced an item he’d managed to get his hands on shortly before their departure, very much with escape in mind – a pair of heavy-duty dental pliers with the tips shaped like a parrot’s beak. With the use of those improvised excavation tools, a small hole was torn through to the outside, at the point where their car linked with the next.

  A buzz of excitement rippled through the carriage, as the prisoners realised their chances of escape were now very real. But as luck would have it the train began to slow, before eventually coming to a stop. Thinking quickly, Paterson urged one of the men to stuff the hole with his sweater. Thus blocked up, when the guards passed, checking all the carriages were in order, the damage should remain undetected.

  After fifteen minutes, the train began to move once more and no one had raised the alarm. The cutters set to work again, tearing at the wood, desperate to be free. Every now and again the train would slow and stop, to let other locomotives pass; each time the men stuffed the hole with their clothing. Finally, at just after midnight, the gap was declared big enough for a man to squeeze through.