Brooks and Cross chose Saturday at midnight for their breakout. They figured the guards would be distracted by checking the night shift from the mines back into camp. Plus on Saturdays the guards tended to have a beer or two. As an added bonus a violent thunderstorm hammered the camp with pelting rain that evening, providing Brooks and Cross with additional cover. Just after 10:00 p.m. they deftly clipped the barbed wire over their windows and then cut through the wire of the first fence in a spot cloaked in shadow. Soaked to the bone, they jumped a second six-foot-high fence, ran down the embankment to the railway line, and slipped off into the darkness. There were no blaring sirens, no searchlights, no gunfire, and no guard dogs chomping at their heels. They made it!
By foot they snaked their way for miles and miles along roads and railway lines headed for Krakow. The two escapees bolted from cover only at night. For sustenance they rationed their food supplies to six biscuits with a little butter and cheese and a small piece of chocolate every twenty-four hours. During the day, they slept shrouded in the woods. After a week on the run they made it to the border of occupied Poland. So far their escape had been uneventful. But now, on the threshold of freedom, both men were on edge. As they crawled along a creek on the outskirts of the city, Brooks and Cross stopped dead in their tracks. Small glowing lights straight ahead hinted at the presence of border patrols or search parties. Slinking slowly towards the glowing lights, the fugitives realized that what they thought were cigarettes were actually only fireflies.
The next morning a cold rain teemed down onto Krakow as the two men wandered through the streets of the city, cautiously trying to make contact with a member of the underground. By nightfall they had failed to find a contact, so they headed to the outskirts of the city, picked an isolated house, and decided to rap on the door and try their luck. The instant the door opened they were toast. Three men answered the door, two of them with swastikas on their lapels. Hubert turned on his best Montreal accent in a vain attempt to spin a story that he and his friend were French peasants forced to work at a labour camp who simply wanted in out of the rain. But the pro-Nazi Poles turned them over to the local Gestapo agents, who quickly discovered their POW dog tags. The jig was up.
The Nazi agents kicked, slapped, and beat the snot out of Brooks and Cross, probing them for information about how they had escaped and who they were trying to connect with in Krakow. The boys gave them nothing, and on June 25 Hubert got shipped back to Stalag VIII-B.
The second he hit the massive POW camp, Brooks was re-interrogated and thrown into solitary confinement for fourteen days as punishment for his escape attempt. Fortunately his masquerade as Private Fred Cole of the New Zealand Army was still intact. Brooks still had hope for a second chance at escape. Already weak and malnourished after weeks on the run, he was fed only bread and water for ten days. Then his jailors softened up and gave him a couple of tiny potatoes, a ladleful of bland soup, and a couple of thin slices of black bread. His time on the lam had given Brooks serious blisters that became infected. The infection spread to the lymph nodes in his groin, and he required surgery and hospitalization.
While he was recuperating in his hospital bed, Hubert met another escapee, Wing Commander Douglas Bader, the legless Royal Air Force ace fighter pilot. Although Bader had lost both legs in a flying accident in 1931, he went on to become one of the Royal Air Force’s top aces in World War II. Bader never allowed his physical challenges to slow him down. Despite being captured after bailing out of his stricken fighter during a dogfight over German-occupied France in 1941, Bader had attempted numerous escapes. The two men shared stories and discussed the intricacies of plotting a successful jailbreak.
A few weeks later, with his fake identity still intact, Brooks started working on his next escape. This time he set his eyes in a new direction. He would escape south across the Czech border, with the ultimate goal of reaching the south of France. He hooked up with a British sergeant named Joseph Sidi, who knew the Mediterranean well and was also game to bust out of Stalag VIII-B. Brooks and Sidi got themselves posted to a railroad work party not far from the Czech border. There were sixty men in the work camp, and upon his arrival Brooks quickly learned that quite a few of them were also itching to get out. After only two days on the railroad, Brooks and Sidi came up with a plan for their escape. Again it would be a midnight departure on a Saturday. This time around, four other prisoners were in on the breakout. The men would split off in pairs once they hit the ground.
The guards must have gotten wind that an escape was imminent. Every night when the prisoners returned from the railroad to the two-storey building where they were billeted, the guards took their pants and shoes and locked them away in a bolted room. But Brooks and the others had already figured out a workaround. They scheduled a fake boxing match in the mess hall to distract their captors. On Saturday night, while other prisoners throttled each other and men hooted and hollered, Brooks, Sidi, and the other fugitives used stolen hacksaws to slice through the window bars of the precious trouser room. They left the bars in position so as not to alert the guards. Later that evening, after the guards had made their final rounds, Brooks and company snuck back in, gathered up their pants and shoes, and knotted together a series of blankets. Using the “rope” made of blankets, they shimmied down the side of the building to the ground floor and stole off in pairs. Once again Hubert slipped away from his German keepers in the dead of night undetected.
The plan was for Brooks and Sidi to hoof it across the mountains towards Brunn and then make tracks for Lunenburg, thirty miles to the south, where Hubert figured they could sneak onto a freight train bound for Milan. It was a perfect plan. But in Brunn they almost got caught while raiding apples in an orchard. The irate owner and his guard dog pounced on Brooks, but when he and Sidi produced their mustard-tin Union Jack the Czech farmer called off his dog, loaded the men up with apples, and wished them well on their journey. The next night, while they crossed a railway bridge near Lunenburg, a German guard fired shots at them, but Brooks and Sidi tore off into the brush and evaded capture. They made their way to the Lunenburg marshalling yards and found an open freight car loaded with huge lumps of coal and destined for Milan.
In the murky light of pre-dawn they carefully burrowed down into the coal, making sure not to disturb a white line that was painted over the top for inspectors. Buried in their tiny cavern of coal, Brooks and Sidi rode the rails for an entire day, all the way to the outskirts of Vienna. Finally it seemed Brooks was on his way to freedom.
When the train pulled into the railway yards early the next morning, however, fate delivered a punishing blow. Their car was uncoupled from the engine and shunted off to a siding. The fugitives had no idea how long it might be parked there. Could be hours or even days. Brooks and Sidi crawled out of their coal cave and hid in the forest with plans to return at night. Hours later when they snuck back into the rail yard they couldn’t find their coal train. After a half hour of searching they figured the next best bet was a lumber car they discovered that was bound for Trieste. They squeezed themselves in among the giant pieces of cut wood and settled in for the long ride to Italy. Just after midnight the train started moving, but their luck had run out. Before leaving the yard, the cars were shunted to an inspection platform that was lit up in a blaze of spotlights. Brooks and Sidi were yanked from their burrow by Austrian workers and railway police and handed over to a detachment of SS troops. The Germans were not pleased, and they didn’t mess around.
In no time the two escapees found themselves face-deep in the mud at the bottom of a Straflager punishment cell on the grounds of a French POW camp outside Vienna. The cell was essentially a dugout with a barred door. After thirty hours there they received their first dribs of rations. Determined to escape, Brooks and Sidi spent the next four nights in the freezing muck of the Straflager, carefully working loose one of the bars. But while they were working on the second bar, they got caught red-handed. The German officer in charge exploded in rage.
He told them, “Attempting to escape . . . this will be a lesson to both of you.” For the next fifteen minutes the guards pummelled Brooks and Sidi with their rifle butts. When the guards tired of using their rifles, they kicked and punched the two escapees repeatedly. To Brooks it felt as if the beating lasted for hours. As he and Sidi lay wounded in the Straflager, extra guards were posted to watch them. With their dreams of a quick escape squashed, the two were shipped back to Stalag VIII-B within the week.
Upon his arrival at Lamsdorf, Brooks was once again thrown into solitary confinement for fourteen days and given a diet of just bread and water. His captors told him that if he tried another escape he’d be shot on sight. But Brooks wasn’t rattled by the threats.
A few weeks after being released from solitary he met up with a red-headed Scotsman named Sergeant John Duncan of the 51st Gordon Highland Division. Like Brooks, Duncan was burning to get out and was bestowed with a fighting spirit. He was also a seasoned soldier who had made three attempted prison escapes, including one where he successfully spent fifteen months on the lam in France. Duncan had been caught and sent back to Stalag VIII-B only because a jealous lady friend squealed to the Nazis when she spotted him showing an interest in another woman.
Finally it seemed Brooks had found the perfect teammate. They devised a new bid for freedom. Both knew this was their last chance. If they got caught it was game over. They set their sights on Poland. Its hilly terrain and thick forests presented an ideal target for them to find asylum and seek out local help. On November 10, 1942, they got themselves posted to a small working camp of twenty prisoners at a sawmill in Tost, Silesia. Just a few days after their arrival, Brooks and Duncan got wind that there was a snitch among the POWs. But no one was going to spoil their plans. They quickly sniffed out the rat and confronted the man, who was working as the camp’s interpreter. Getting him out of there was the only way for Brooks and Duncan to safely make a bid for freedom. He soon had “an accident” that required him to be shipped back to the hospital at Stalag VIII-B.
Although their snitch was now out of the way, the first snows of winter had already fallen. Brooks and Duncan decided to wait until spring to make their break. In the meantime Brooks worked his magic to gather as much information and as many materials as possible in preparation for their bolt for freedom.
He spent the entire winter as the helper on the mill’s delivery truck, which dropped lumber pit props to all the mines in the area. Brooks and the German truck driver also made a few extra German marks by loading up their empty truck with coal and delivering it to local households around Tost. Hubert seized upon the opportunity to seek out friendly Poles and make contact. Every once in a while he put some dirt in the carburetor when the truck driver and the guard weren’t looking. When the truck invariably broke down, Brooks volunteered to walk around and find Polish citizens to help get it going again. He used his ingenious series of truck “breakdowns” that winter to get his hands on two large maps of Europe as well as four maps of the Tost district and the entire region as far as Krakow. The icing on the cake was a friendly Pole who gave him the address of a Polish Underground contact in the city of Częstochowa.
By the time spring rolled around Brooks and Duncan were ready to mount their final escape. They had a stash of food supplies, maps, clothing, some rudimentary Polish language skills, a compass, and knowledge of the immediate terrain around their work camp. On Monday, May 10, 1943, Brooks and Duncan plunged their hacksaw blades into soap and cut through the window bars of their sleeping quarters. This time there was no raging thunderstorm or boisterous boxing match to mask their flight. Instead, a fellow POW sat on the steps and plucked his mandolin while a second man sang softly to the night sky. Just after midnight Brooks and Duncan vanished into the darkness.
Night after night they beat a path towards Częstochowa and stole a few hours of restless sleep while hiding in the woods during the day. About five days out they were shocked from their sleep by the rumbling wheels of a cart. As a farmer approached, Brooks and Duncan feared the worst. Maybe they were about to get shot; maybe they were about to get turned in. Whatever this man’s intentions, there was zero doubt that he had spotted them and was coming straight at them. But sensing their tension the man called out, in broken German and Polish, “I am a good Pole. I saw you when I went to my fields early this morning and I said to myself, Let them sleep. Now I’m going into the village to fetch the schoolteacher and some food.”
Just like that the pendulum had finally swung back in Brooks’s favour. The generous farmer took them to his farmhouse, and two days later they were introduced to a pair of Polish smugglers who helped them sneak into German-occupied Poland, and from there on to Częstochowa and a meeting with the Polish Underground fighters.
It had been more than a year since Brooks and his crewmates bailed out of their stricken bomber. Instead of masquerading as a Kiwi soldier and attempting to escape from multiple prison camps, Hubert could have taken a correspondence course, learned to play piano, or studied Shakespeare in the officers’ wing of the air force compound at Stalag VIII-B. But Brooks had joined up to fight. And so had John Duncan. Of the ten thousand British air force prisoners who were housed in permanent camps, fewer than thirty ever successfully escaped and made it back to Britain or neutral territory.
Getting back to their squadrons in England was virtually impossible. Their new friends in the Polish Underground presented them with three options. They could lie low, wait out the rest of the war, and depend on the generosity of a Polish family. They could join the civilian underground in the city. Or they could take to the hills and join the Polish partisans fighting with the Armia Krajowa, or AK. As far as Brooks and Duncan were concerned, the choice was obvious. A life as a guerilla fighter waging warfare against the occupying German army was their ticket back into the action. They chose to join the AK and fight in the hills.
Polish resistance fighters in stolen German uniforms.
Ralf Brooks
FREEDOM FIGHTERS
08
June 1943. Before taking to the forests of the Carpathian Mountains, Hubert Brooks and John Duncan had to first develop a much better command of the Polish language. For the next three months they found themselves squirrelled away in the attic of a home occupied by a couple of Polish women. Their tutors were a duo of spry octogenarian sisters who had taught in Paris years earlier.
Day after day in the sweltering summer heat of the attic, the sisters brought them their meals and ran them through a series of language exercises using an old chalkboard. All summer long Brooks and Duncan had to stick to the confines of the attic and stay out of sight because a family of Nazi collaborators lived right next door. Although cooped up by day, every evening the fugitives slipped out into the garden to fill their lungs with fresh air and stretch their legs. But despite their confinement, Brooks and Duncan could never forget who and what they were preparing to fight. Every day, as the brave elderly ladies declined Polish verbs for them, they could hear the deadly chatter of machine guns ringing out during execution hour at a nearby Jewish concentration camp.
By August 1943 the two pupils were ready to join a unit of the Armia Krajowa in the vast mountainous forests of southern Poland. Brooks and Duncan criss-crossed their way from underground hideout to underground hideout. Finally, in October they made their way out to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. There, freedom fighters from the forest partisan unit took them to their new home, the Wilk, or Wolf, base camp. Snow already covered the peaks of the Carpathians, and the grasses of the mountain glades were crusted in evening frost.
Most of the forty Armia Krajowa fighters were busy eating supper when Brooks and Duncan walked into the Wilk camp. The two ravenous POWs nearly passed out from glee when they saw the massive portions of food on offer. Their plates were loaded with at least two pounds of beef stew. After a year in captivity on a steady diet of water, black bread, and meagre German rations, this was an incredible feast. An elated and appr
eciative Brooks exclaimed, “We can live like this for ever and ever!” His new partisan friends laughed and replied, “You’ll be tired of meat before long.”
The men of the Wilk forest unit that Brooks and Duncan had joined were a motley crew of amateur soldiers. Most wore civilian clothes, but some wore parts of uniforms. The youngest of the men in camp was still a teenager at seventeen. The oldest was the same age as Brooks’s pal John Duncan, thirty-eight. The partisan fighters came from all walks of life. Some were university graduates; others were hardy farm stock and Goral mountain men from the nearby valleys. There were also some real soldiers among the group, as well as civilians who had fled the cities to join the fight in the mountains. All the men in the AK had one thing in common: each and every one of them was filled with a burning desire to repay the oppressive German forces for all the cruelty they had inflicted upon the helpless, innocent citizens of Poland.
The forest lair of the Wilk camp was carved into the Kudlon mountainside, in a densely forested area beside a deep ravine. A mountain stream just below camp provided fresh water. Wooden walls covered in thick turf were erected inside the dugout, and an iron stove sat on a large stone in one corner of the handmade cavern. Bunk beds were lined up along the dirt walls, and there were two small ventilation openings under the roof and door of the primitive hut. Thanks to the stove and the body heat of the forty men, it was toasty warm inside. From the outside the dugout blended in perfectly with its surroundings, making it virtually invisible to the untrained eye. Provisions were stored in another dugout nearby. Potatoes were buried to prevent rot, and meat was either salted to improve preservation or hung in the trees once the weather became cold enough.
Against All Odds Page 11
