‘There is, in my opinion, every reason to think that four of us can get clean away,’ said Dick O’Connor at the meeting, as he began to outline his and De Wiart’s new scheme. ‘Obviously, much preparation still remains to be made, but I’d like to run through what Carton and I have come up with.’
‘Please do, Dick,’ replied Neame, lighting a cigarette. The rest of the officer prisoners had gathered in the sitting room and were seated in comfortable armchairs. There was a certain faded grandeur to the castle’s furnishings.23 At this time of the evening, they all knew that the Italians rarely entered the castle. They would come at a certain time in the night to check that all of the prisoners were in their rooms asleep, but for now they shouldn’t be disturbed.
‘Carton and I propose an escape through the windows right behind you,’ said O’Connor pointing. All heads turned to the darkened windows that were set along one side of the ground floor dining room. The dining room was located on the north side of the castle’s central keep, facing the guards’ compound and the two corner towers.
‘The team will consist of six men. Four will form the escaping party, along with two assistants,’ said O’Connor, turning back to the table. ‘Once through one of those windows, the team will cross the garden to the white wall. The wall is, as you know, about ten feet tall, so they will carry a ladder. Once on top of the wall, the team will pull the ladder up after them and use it to descend into the Italian part of the castle. The team will then creep to the castle’s outer wall and climb up to the battlements via the staircase near the gate tower.’24 O’Connor paused, scanning the faces around him.
‘Obviously, this sort of thing can only be done under the cover of darkness, and preferably a further layer of cover,’ he added, running a finger along one corner of his white moustache.
‘What sort of cover do you have in mind, Dick?’ asked Neame.
‘We’ll wait until a windy and wet night. The noise of the wind will deaden the noise of our movements and the rain will hopefully keep the sentries in their boxes,’25 replied O’Connor.
‘How do you propose to get off the castle wall?’ asked Neame.
‘Well, this is where the two assistants come in to play,’ replied O’Connor. ‘We’ll secure a rope to the battlements, and then each man can slide down to the dry moat outside. It’s a drop of perhaps fifteen feet at that end of the castle. The assistants will then haul the rope back up and retrace their route back here, covering our tracks.’26
‘Gosh, those chaps will be taking a big risk,’ said Neame. ‘They’ll be making the journey twice.’
‘That’s right, Phil,’ replied O’Connor. ‘However, if done correctly, we could use this method more than once.’
‘Well, I’d like to volunteer as one of the assistants, if you’ll have me,’ said Neame. ‘This job is also going to require some muscle, so I think we should ask Sergeant Baxter to act as the second assistant. He’s young and fit and probably the strongest man among us.’
‘I was thinking along the same lines myself, Phil,’ replied O’Connor. ‘He’s a grand type. I’ll ask him later.’27
‘Now, who do you have in mind for the escaping team, apart from yourself and Carton?’ asked Neame.
‘Hold on, sir,’ piped up one of the generals. ‘I don’t mean to be indelicate, but surely Carton is in no shape for such a job?’
General De Wiart’s head whipped round, his one eye flashing at this obvious remark. He was going, he thundered, and any so-and-so who thought otherwise ‘could do this, that, and the other!’ as Leeming later recounted.28 His barrack-room language made even hardened soldiers blanch. ‘He must hold the world record for bad language,’29 wrote Lord Ranfurly to his wife. When it was pointed out, not unreasonably, that a one-armed man could not climb fifteen feet down a rope without assistance, O’Connor was ready with the answer.
‘We’ll tie the rope around Carton’s waist, and General Neame, Baxter and myself can lower him to the ground. I, as the smallest and lightest, will be the last man over the wall.’30
‘Quite so,’ barked De Wiart, still fuming from the questioning of his ability.
‘Who else will you be taking with you?’ asked Neame.
‘Boyd and Combe,’ replied O’Connor. The other two escapers nodded silently, having already been let in on the plan several days before. The team was an eclectic mix. The redoubtable O’Connor lived and breathed escaping day and night. He thought about little else. De Wiart viewed the whole thing as essentially a game, and it appealed to his swashbuckling nature. Air Vice-Marshal Boyd was sober and serious. He was ‘essentially a realist, and he wanted to have the answer ready for every situation that might arise.’31 He believed that escaping was his duty, though he harboured serious reservations about their chances of actually getting out of Italy. Brigadier Combe, though a fusspot over his hens, was as solid as a rock when it came to escaping.
‘What about the sentries on the battlements?’ asked Brigadier Todhunter.
‘Where we will climb up, the nearest sentry is about 50 yards away. As I mentioned before, the sentries will in all likelihood be inside their boxes because of the inclement weather. You may have noticed, gentlemen, that our guards at present are not as alert as they should be. I don’t think they expect us bunch of old campaigners to try anything so foolish as escaping.’32 The other officers guffawed.
‘Well, gentlemen, we’ve a lot to think about,’ said Neame matter-of-factly. ‘I like your plan, Dick, and I think that with careful preparation you’ve every chance of pulling off a splendid show. The issues as I see them are as follows. The ground over which we will cross will need to be surveyed for cover, and noise tests conducted on windy nights.’
O’Connor and the others all nodded.
‘Have you thought about disguises?’
‘Actually, we’ve an excellent tailor among the orderlies, sir,’ interjected Brigadier Combe. ‘Private Dwyer. I think that he can help us put together escape outfits.’33
‘We haven’t yet spoken about the ultimate destination, which I take it will be the Swiss frontier,’ said Neame.
‘Carton and I have calculated that it will take the team about 21 days to march to the frontier,’ said O’Connor. ‘So we are making our ration packs up based on that duration. We’ve already started working out the correct weight-to-size ratios.’
‘What about maps and compasses?’ asked Neame.
‘We’re going to ask our tame doctor for some help on the maps side of things,’ replied O’Connor, referring to the castle’s Italian Army medical officer Dr Egon Bolaffio. Through his conversations with the prisoners, it was clear that Bolaffio was highly sympathetic to the Allied cause, and vocally anti-Fascist. He could probably be trusted. Due to his unique position, the doctor was able to come and go without unduly arousing interest from the guards, and, importantly, as an Italian officer he wasn’t searched. It was now a question of whether the good doctor was prepared to directly assist an escape. O’Connor and his conspirators were running a risk letting the doctor in on part of the plan, but it was a risk that they judged to be worth a stretch in solitary. The doctor, after all, would be playing for far higher stakes than any of the prisoners. If caught aiding an escape, Bolaffio could expect to be put up against the nearest wall and shot.34
‘Once we have the necessary maps to hand, we’ll be employing G-P’s services to reproduce them.’
Gambier-Parry smiled and nodded. G-P’s artistic skills were already widely appreciated by the other prisoners; they were skills that were easily turned to copying and forging.35
‘Leeming has agreed to make the compasses,’ said Boyd, turning to his ADC beside him.
‘Good show, Leeming,’ said Neame. Leeming knew that it was going to be a challenge, but he had already sketched out a preliminary design and thought about available materials.36
‘So, we’ve much to do,’ announced Neame at the end of the meeting. ‘There’s one more thing that I’d like to add before we bre
ak up. As you know, I favour any show that causes the Eye-ties maximum aggravation. Even if you don’t get to Switzerland, simply getting our chaps beyond the walls will tie down inordinate Italian military resources that could be better employed elsewhere.’ Everyone grunted their agreement. ‘It will show Il Duce and his rabble that we are not prepared to sit out the rest of the show, as they undoubtedly expect.’
As the meeting broke up and the officers headed for their rooms, there was a feeling that a corner had at last been turned. They had a workable plan, and though there were many boxes yet to tick, the plan was sound. More than that, nearly everyone was to be involved in some way, whether or not they were on the actual escape team. Finally, after the months of lethargy and time-wasting at the Villa Orsini, they all had a defined goal to aim for. It rejuvenated them all, and gave purpose to their otherwise drab existences as prisoners.
It all looked so simple: how could they possibly fail?
*
In the event, Dr Bolaffio really came through for the prisoners. O’Connor managed to have a quiet word with the good doctor on one of his regular visits to the prisoners’ rooms, normally made two or three times a week,37 and Bolaffio was only too keen to help. A few days later he returned to O’Connor and ushered him into his room.
‘Take these,’ said the young Bolaffio, unbuttoning the top of his tunic and pulling out a flattened bundle of papers that he had secreted inside.
O’Connor quickly examined the ‘papers’ and was astonished to discover a complete set of Italian military maps for the region between the castle and the Swiss frontier.
‘How in the hell did you get your hands on these, doctor?’ asked a dumbfounded O’Connor.
‘Headquarters in Florence,’ replied Bolaffio. ‘I “borrowed” them. But they must be returned soon, before they are missed. How long will you need to copy them, general?’
‘Can you give us a week?’ asked O’Connor, deeply impressed by the doctor’s bravery and guile.
‘A week would be too long,’ replied Bolaffio, grimacing. ‘Three days, general, then I will return for them.’38
Suddenly, the two conspirators heard footsteps in the corridor outside the room. O’Connor quickly stashed the maps under his bedding. Bolaffio started to ‘examine’ the general, just as Captain Pederneschi pushed the door, which was slightly ajar, wide open. Pederneschi stepped into O’Connor’s room and stared at the two men, a pair of kid leather gloves held in one hand while the other rested on his leather pistol holster.
‘Yes, that’s nothing to worry about, General O’Connor,’ said Bolaffio slowly, feeling O’Connor’s glands in his neck. ‘You will feel fine in a couple of days.’
‘Are you ill, Generale?’ enquired Pederneschi, his eyes boring into O’Connor’s.
‘Just a sore throat, Captain,’ replied O’Connor hoarsely.
‘Well, you should take better care of yourself … at your age,’ replied Pederneschi, a slightly sarcastic tone entering his voice as he spoke.
*
‘I’m too old for this nonsense,’ complained a panting and sweating Owen Boyd as he hauled his short body up yet another flight of steps inside the castle’s central keep.
‘What about me, old boy,’ asked a cheerful Carton de Wiart, who was right behind Boyd. ‘I’m eight years older than you, you know!’
‘Just think of the end goal, chaps,’ gasped Brigadier Combe, behind De Wiart.
‘The only … thing … I’m … thinking about,’ managed Boyd, ‘is my breakfast and … a … bloody … sit … down.’
‘That’s the trouble with you flyboys,’ quipped De Wiart, ‘you spend half your life sitting on your arses up in the wild blue yonder and the other half propping up one end of a bar!’
‘Bloody … cheek!’ gasped Air Vice-Marshal Boyd. ‘But I’m too … tired … to argue with you.’
‘How many steps to the top?’ called out General O’Connor from the back of the queue of climbing men.
‘One hundred … and fifty-seven,’ announced De Wiart, grinning fiercely.
‘You’re loving this, aren’t you Carton!’ replied O’Connor.
‘Nothing like a bracing climb in the morning, what!’ bellowed De Wiart, barely breaking a sweat. ‘I’ll race you old farts to the top!’ The endurance of the castle’s most elderly resident was truly astonishing. He seemed hardly out of breath.
‘God save us!’ growled Boyd as De Wiart’s tall frame elbowed past him up the stone steps. ‘I do believe … Carton … will run … all the way … to Switzerland!’
Endurance training had begun shortly after General Neame had given the go-ahead for the white wall job. It had been calculated that the team of four escapers would need to hike cross-country for 21 days in order to bring them to the Swiss frontier and freedom. Each man would need to carry his kit, and rations to sustain him, in a rucksack, the weight of which was calculated at around 25lbs.39 O’Connor and De Wiart quickly devised an exercise regime to bring the team to the peak of physical fitness for the trial ahead.
Dummy rucksacks were made, and were filled with old bricks to simulate the weight of the escape kit. Each morning O’Connor, De Wiart, Boyd and Combe rose at 5.30am and for one hour marched briskly up and down the tall stone staircases inside the central keep that rose seven floors from the dungeons to the top of the battlements. The other officers and men acted as lookouts to ensure that the calisthenics were not interrupted by the sudden appearance of an Italian guard.40 It was a punishing routine for the middle-aged escapers. Combe, the youngest, was 48, while De Wiart was over 63 years old.
The generals also learned skills more appropriate to young commandos than middle-aged senior officers. Once on to the outer curtain wall of the castle during the night-time escape, the four-man team would be expected to climb down the fifteen-foot outside drop by rope. A quiet place was found where they could practise, and after several weeks the generals could shin up and down ropes like circus performers, with the exception of De Wiart. It had been agreed that Generals Neame and O’Connor, assisted by the burly Sergeant Baxter, would lower the one-handed hero to the ground. The technique for doing this was duly perfected. ‘Baxter was an ardent weight-lifting devotee,’ wrote De Wiart, ‘performed every gymnastic, and let down my eleven stone and over six foot body as if I had been a baby in a blanket.’41
The window that would be used to exit the dining room was carefully prepared, its hinges oiled so that no sound would be made on the night of the escape. But much more involved efforts were under way to produce the escape equipment. Private Dwyer, the camp’s tailor, worked for weeks recutting and dying pieces of uniform until all four men had a convincing suit of civilian clothes. Many experiments were made with the packing and repacking of the escapers’ rucksacks, to find the correct load and size. Gambier-Parry excelled himself in the production of maps and route cards, hand-drawn from the maps that Dr Bolaffio had bravely ‘borrowed’ from Italian military headquarters in Florence. Mounted on linen, the maps could be folded out to show particular districts that the escapers would pass through on their way to Switzerland, and were completely waterproof.42
One of the most important pieces of kit that each escaper required was a compass, without which the maps would be next to useless. Flight Lieutenant Leeming was given the task of manufacturing four small compasses. He found that the small, round Bakelite boxes that held boot polish were ideal. Leeming fitted each emptied box with a magnetised needle, the tip marked with a small piece of luminous paint from a broken wristwatch to show north in the darkness. The compasses were waterproofed with glass lids made from carefully ground and shaped pieces of glass that Leeming stole from small windows in out-of-the-way parts of the castle. He shaped the glass on the castle’s rough stone walls, a tedious job that required weeks of careful work. Once complete, each compass was immersed in a tank of water for 24 hours to test the waterproofing.43
Neame had set Zero Day, the day of the escape, provisionally for sometime in the autumn
of 1941. By 7 November winter had ‘set in with very cold weather,’ noted Todhunter, ‘which makes me and everyone else hungry.’44 The supply of Red Cross parcels had been intermittent into the winter, and Todhunter noted dramatic weight loss. He had shed 21lbs since April.45 The weather and food shortages conspired to make life rather grim for the prisoners. ‘Our castle is pretty cold … and almost impossible to keep warm,’ Todhunter wrote.46
The escape preparations took so long that it was Christmas before the civilian outfits, rope, compasses and maps were finally ready. It was now much too late in the year to contemplate an escape. The weather in Northern Italy was snowy and often very wet during the winter, and the four escapers would not have been able to survive outside for the best part of a month. There was nothing for it but to await the spring.
*
Christmas became a time of reflection for the prisoners, with their thoughts naturally turning to home and family. ‘Somehow ordinary days are easy to bear and it is only on a day like yesterday that one really feels what it is like to be a prisoner,’ wrote Lord Ranfurly to his wife on Boxing Day 1941. ‘Luckily I was fairly busy preparing our rather ersatz celebrations and didn’t have time to think too much.’47
The generals managed a fair Christmas, made easier by a healthy stock of wine and spirits. Presents arrived in the shape of gifts from the YMCA – board games, musical instruments and two complete badminton sets. Red Cross parcels had been sent, but unfortunately they arrived too late for the festivities. Mail did come, and Ranfurly was not alone in being outraged at how their imprisonment was being perceived back home by friends and family. ‘So many people write to us in all seriousness and say, “How nice for you to see the art galleries, etc., in Florence.” Are we indignant! I’ve only seen Florence from the railway station. This is a prison.’48
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