Castle of the Eagles

by Felton, Mark;

  After a thorough inspection of the tunnel, Neame told the others that there was a crack in the castle’s wall that was allowing water to percolate into the tunnel shaft. He asked Hargest and Miles to make a sump in the tunnel to draw off the worst of the water.1 It was a disgusting job, the two brigadiers working in cold, mud and rainwater, but they managed and the tunnel dried out after a couple of days (though work recommenced the day after the rain had stopped).2

  *

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Air Vice-Marshal Boyd. ‘How on earth are we supposed to get through this lot?’ The tunnel was now only four feet from the surface, according to Neame’s probings, but Boyd and Brigadier Miles had run into a problem. They were slowly excavating what appeared to be another layer of rock that ran right across the roof of the shaft. Neame was called upon to inspect it. Neame’s probe must have somehow passed through a crack or hidden gap. Boyd pointed out, quite rightly, that excavating such a solid mass of rock right above the diggers’ heads was incredibly dangerous. Boyd suggested changing the direction of the exit shaft to avoid the rock, but Neame refused to countenance such an idea. Time was of the essence. They were well into March 1943, and any serious delay might scupper their chances of getting away. And there were other factors to consider, as Neame explained: ‘I saw no chance of concealment in driving horizontally out of the hill-slope, and we had not enough timber to make changes of direction in gallery and shaft, and would, in all probability, have struck the same layer of rock.’3

  There was nothing for it but for the diggers to find some way of breaking the rock layer up and removing the material. Boyd and Miles volunteered for this onerous task, having already mastered rock removal during the construction of the main tunnel. A long discussion followed about how to prop up the rocks that they would be working on to prevent a terrible accident. Boyd and Miles eventually overcame the layer of rocks by widening the shaft until they discovered seams. Immense labour and considerable risk were necessary to lever out these huge rock pieces, which weighed 40–50lbs each. In fact, the rocks were so heavy that they were not removed from the tunnel – instead, the diggers rolled them down to the base of the entrance shaft and stored them there.

  Slowly, but surely, the roof of the exit shaft was raised inch by painful inch towards the surface. Neame continued to carefully probe the overhead soil until there was only six inches remaining. Then a halt to the work was called.4

  ‘That’s it,’ said Neame, turning to the small handful of diggers who had crowded into the shaft and tunnel to hear the results of the latest probe. ‘Gentlemen, the tunnel is finished.’ It was 20 March 1943. It had taken the middle-aged excavators nearly seven months of punishingly hard labour to drive 52 feet of shafts and tunnel deep beneath the great castle’s foundations. Only six inches remained to be cut away, and that would happen on the night of the escape. If the tunnellers needed evidence of their incredible feat of engineering they had only to glance at the massive pile of spoil that stood ten feet high inside the chapel.

  The shaft was timbered up and Lord Ranfurly put a strong roof in place, so that anyone who walked over the exit shaft would not collapse the six inches of soil and reveal the tunnel beneath.

  In the meantime, Ranfurly had also been busy making a cover for the exit hole. The wooden lid was painted and covered with earth and pine needles, creating a very convincing camouflage. It was intended that the tunnel would be used several times, so concealment remained paramount.

  *

  ‘I say, that’s a really remarkable likeness,’ said Dick O’Connor. The others all grunted their agreement.

  ‘Right down to my bare patch,’ said Hargest, touching his balding crown with one hand. ‘Howes has done a first-class job.’

  Hargest, O’Connor, Neame and the other escapers were standing in the doorway to Hargest’s bedroom and staring intently at his bed. The bed was occupied, a human shape lying bundled up beneath the blankets, a head resting on its side on the pillow complete with ear, dark hair and bald spot. The view was slightly obscured by a mosquito net that hung down over the bed, suspended from a bamboo frame.

  ‘It’s really uncanny,’ said Neame, folding his arms as he stared at the figure in Hargest’s bed. Neame turned to the young private who stood just inside the door.

  ‘Fine work, young man. Very fine work indeed,’ said Neame seriously. Private J.E. Howes, Brigadier Hargest’s batman, stiffened to attention.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied slightly embarrassedly.

  The manufactured figure in the bed was an ingenious answer to a difficult question that General Neame had posed a month before. It was planned that the six escapers would exit the tunnel around 9.00pm on the day chosen for the breakout. But there was a very serious problem. The Italians ensured that the duty officer, accompanied by a sergeant, checked that all of the prisoners were in their beds at around 1.30am, giving the escapers barely four-and-a-half hours to get clear of the castle and out of Florence before they would be missed. They couldn’t leave much earlier than 9.00pm because they needed full dark, and anyway the Italians checked them during the early evening. They needed to find a way of fooling the duty officer into thinking that the six escaped generals were still in their rooms in order to buy more time. The morning roll call was not taken until 11.00am, and a fourteen-hour head start could very well be the difference between success and failure.

  The moment the Italians realised that some of the prisoners were missing an alert would be transmitted to all police stations, barracks, train stations, ports and frontier posts. Descriptions of the men, along with their photographs, would be circulated and every official would be looking for them. Patrols would be dispatched to likely points, such as railways stations, where escapers might try to transit, and spot checks on identity papers would be rigorously instituted. For the two teams that planned to catch a train from Florence to Milan, and then change trains to Como, any delay was vitally important. Travel during wartime was fraught with overcrowding and delays, and they knew that their journey north could be slow.

  The brilliant idea of making dummies was proposed and accepted a few weeks before the tunnel was finished. It was important that each dummy should have as strong a likeness as possible to the escaper that it was based upon. Fortunately, one group of prisoners in the castle had long been observing the escapers – their batmen or army servants. So the task of making the dummies fell to the very young soldiers who looked after the senior officers.

  The dummy representing Hargest was typical of those manufactured by the batmen. Private Howes had asked Hargest to grow his hair out and had then saved the clippings retrieved from Able Seaman Cunningham, the castle’s barber. Constructing the head was relatively simple. Howes had taken a large handkerchief and soaked it in glue. Hargest’s hair clippings were then stuck to it, remembering to leave a bald spot on the crown. The handkerchief was then stuck on to a stuffed balaclava and a cloth ear sewn on to one side.5 The ‘body’ under the blankets was simply a roll of Hargest’s clothing.

  Each of the six dummies was different. General O’Connor and Brigadier Combe were fair-haired, while Miles and De Wiart were bald.6 From a distance, at night, the dummies might just fool the Italians. Neame ensured that the illusion was stronger by diffusing the light. He applied for mosquito nets for the prisoners and they started using them at night immediately, even though not a single insect had yet been seen. The Italians soon grew used to seeing the officers sleeping soundly beneath these nets, which made it harder to clearly see the bodies in the beds. But it had been obvious to Neame and the others that the dummies would only pass inspection if they were viewed from some distance away. To this end, Neame made several complaints, both to Commandant Tranquille and to the Red Cross, explaining that the duty officer’s habit of entering an officer’s room during the 1.30am inspection was severely disrupting the prisoners’ sleep.7 After much arguing and negotiation, Tranquille agreed that in the interests of allowing his elderly prisoners a good night’s sleep
, the duty officer would instead merely open the door to a prisoner’s room and use a handheld torch to conduct a quick inspection. On no account was the officer to enter the prisoners’ rooms during the inspection. Neame and the others knew that viewed through a mosquito net by the light of a torch, the dummies should pass for real people.8

  *

  For several days after the tunnel had been completed, the escapers checked their disguises, papers and maps. Flight Lieutenant Leeming had manufactured some more of the little compasses that were housed in Italian Bakelite shoe polish boxes, so all of the teams were properly equipped. All now looked to General Neame for a final decision about when to launch the escape. He, and he alone, held responsibility for ordering ‘Zero Day’.

  It all came down now to the right weather conditions. Wind was essential to cover any noise that the escapers made as they excavated the last six inches of dirt from the exit shaft before charging off into the night. Rain was the second prerequisite, in order to hopefully hold the wall sentries inside their guard boxes instead of prowling the battlements just two dozen feet above the tunnel exit. It was a matter of waiting until those two weather conditions occurred on the same night.9

  It didn’t look promising. Each day and night was ‘fair’: dry, with little or no wind. All of the escapers had taken to constantly reporting on the weather on an hourly basis in the days that followed the completion of the tunnel. In the meantime, the final details of the escape plan were settled.

  ‘So it’s agreed that Ranfurly will remove the final six inches of soil in the shaft,’ said General Neame. ‘I will assist as required. We’ll begin excavations at 8.00pm, leaving us an hour before the final kick-off.’

  Ranfurly nodded. He had been selected for the final dig largely because of his height – six foot three inches.

  ‘I’ll then camouflage the hole with the special cover I’ve made,’ stated Ranfurly.

  ‘All of the escape kit, which is currently stored in the chapel, will be brought up to the rooms ready for the teams to change into,’ continued Neame.

  ‘What about the dummies?’ asked Brigadier Miles.

  ‘Those too – have your servants bring them up ready to be placed in the beds.’

  Neame explained that a system of watchers would be placed to give warning of any Italians approaching, though this was deemed unlikely.

  ‘Right, let’s go through the plan one more time regarding the tunnel,’ said Neame.

  ‘I enter first, sir,’ said John Combe. ‘I’m to reconnoitre the ground immediately after getting out of the shaft.’10

  ‘I’m next,’ said Miles. ‘I’m to work with John and guide the rest of the party to some spot concealed from the castle road.’

  ‘Then it’s my turn,’ said Air Vice-Marshal Boyd. ‘Behind me will be Jim and Dick,’ he said, referring to Brigadier Hargest and General O’Connor.’

  ‘Yes, and Hargest and I will help Carton out of the exit,’ said O’Connor.

  ‘And then I close the exit using Dan’s special cover, sprinkle some more soil over it, obliterate footmarks and then make my way to the hidden RV where the others will be waiting,’ said Hargest.11

  It all sounded so simple – but doing it for real: that would be the greatest test of nerve they had faced since they were last in action.

  *

  ‘It’s raining!’ declared an excited Dick O’Connor on the morning of 28 March. The rest of the escapers and their helpers went to the windows of the sitting room or the door to the courtyard. O’Connor was right. The sky was overcast and a steady rain had begun to fall.

  As it was a Sunday, Neame would hold religious services for the prisoners in the dining room at midday as usual. G-P, in charge of music, added a hymn to the service in direct reference to the day’s possible significance: ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow goes the pilgrim band’.12

  *

  Two hours later it was still raining.

  ‘What do you say, Phil?’ asked O’Connor expectantly. General Neame stood at the window, arms folded, staring at the rain that tapped gently against the glass. He didn’t move for some time. Behind him the escapers waited for an answer, sitting or standing around the comfortable room, the only sound the logs that fizzed and crackled as they burned in the great stone fireplace. Presently, Neame turned from the window, his face set.

  ‘Right chaps: it’s on,’ nodded Neame. The frozen tableau of generals and brigadiers exploded into life, a burble of excited conversation erupting as they headed for their rooms to begin final preparations for the off.

  *

  General Neame continued to monitor the weather for the next several hours, as did many of the officers and men. With departure set for 9.00pm, the escape teams checked and rechecked their kit and clothes, their stomachs oily with pre-performance nerves. The desire to ‘get cracking’ suffused their muted conversations like a mantra. Lord Ranfurly prepared to enter the tunnel and complete the final excavation, opening the shaft to the outside. But then word came at 7.30pm that everyone was to assemble in the sitting room.

  ‘I’m sorry chaps,’ began Neame, one hand resting on the fireplace’s marble mantelpiece, ‘show’s off.’

  ‘But why?’ exclaimed General De Wiart rather sharply. There was a fair amount of grumbling among the rest and much shaking of heads in disbelief.

  ‘You placed me in command of this operation,’ said Neame, ‘and you gave me the authority to determine when Zero Day would be.’ Everyone quieted down out of respect. ‘Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s the weather … it’s not quite right.’

  ‘But Phil,’ said Dick O’Connor in a reasonable voice, ‘I was just at the courtyard door and it’s still raining.’

  ‘I know it is,’ replied Neame, ‘but it’s slackening off and the wind’s dropped. Look, I know what you chaps are going through, but I can’t let you go ahead until the weather conditions are absolutely perfect. At the moment they are not quite right. We’ve all worked too damned hard to risk falling at the last fence.’

  Neame was talking sense, but the let-down was hard to take for men who were raring to go. For nearly seven long and arduous months they had laboured on the tunnel with one thought in mind – the night when they would crawl through it to freedom. Now, at that victorious moment, they had been told to wait. Several tried to persuade Neame otherwise, but he firmly told them that they would wait.13 ‘A feeling of depression followed this verdict,’ wrote O’Connor, ‘as some thought that we were missing a real chance. But General Neame very properly stuck to his guns, and our disappointment proved short lived.’14

  *

  Monday 29 March 1943 dawned bright and clear. The ‘weather watchers’ were soon at their allotted windows and doorways, smoking cigarettes and pipes and glancing heavenward. The day looked like a bust, but in the afternoon the sky started to cloud over and grow overcast. The clouds took on the dark, pregnant look of rain. Then it began, a few dark spots appearing on the courtyard’s flagstones until the heavens fully opened and the rain came in steady sheets, driving the sentries into their boxes for cover. By 6.00pm the rain was still continuing to fall steadily, with no sign of letting up. The escapers had retired to their rooms after dinner, hardly daring to believe that tonight could be the night, especially since the previous evening’s disappointing cancellation. The men sat on their beds and stared into space, feeling like pent-up racehorses champing at the bit but confined to enforced idleness. They reread letters from loved ones without really taking in their import, glanced at photographs or tried to busy their minds by going over the plan and their part in it for the thousandth time. More than one paced the stone floor of his room, puffing nervously on a cigarette and often pausing by his window to stare out into the wet darkness.

  ‘Jim,’ said a voice behind Hargest as he leaned ruminatively on his windowsill, the smell of rain freshening him as a light wind blew droplets against his face through the open pane. The voice made Hargest jump and he turned quickly. General Neame was l
eaning around the door frame. ‘I think you had better dress,’ said Neame. Hargest took a pace towards him, his face blank.

  ‘It looks as though tonight will be a good one,’15 added Neame, throwing him a big grin before his head and shoulders disappeared from the doorway and Hargest heard his footsteps moving down the corridor to another escaper’s room with the joyous news.

  Hargest moved quickly, pulling on the escape outfit that he had concealed in his room. Watchers had already been posted in case of a sudden Italian appearance, though no officers or guards were expected in the prisoners’ quarters until the 1.30am check.

  *

  ‘Blast!’ exclaimed Dick O’Connor when he pulled out his rucksack from its hiding place. Rats had eaten two large holes in it.

  ‘Don’t worry, sir, I’ll fix that in a jiffy,’ said his batman, Trooper Stones. In 30 minutes Stones had the holes patched and the rucksack fit for service again.16 It needed to be, for O’Connor would be carrying upwards of 25lbs of rations and kit inside of it.

  While the six escapers dressed in their civilian outfits, assisted by their loyal batmen, and the suitcases and rucksacks were checked and rechecked, General Neame and Lieutenant Ranfurly, the latter wearing only a pair of underpants, clambered down into the tunnel. The escapers went down to the dining room for a last meal before the off, though most had little appetite. Ranfurly had also had sandwiches made and hard-boiled eggs readied, and these were distributed to the escapers as extra rations to tide them through the first 24 hours of their journeys.

  Jim Hargest brought a bottle of rum down to the dining room and filled six small medicine bottles, one for each of the escapers. He also took with him, in his suitcase, a small bottle of red wine.17

  It was a time for goodbyes. The escapers all shook hands with the other officers, who would not be going yet, though it was planned that another six men would make the attempt in a day or two. The generals and brigadiers then shook hands with their batmen, the young soldiers who had become like sons to many of these old warriors. They had in some cases fought side-by-side for years and had shared the trials and tribulations of imprisonment together. Though separated not only by age and rank but also by the social class conventions of the era, the batmen and orderlies had nonetheless become their friends.