The Cooler King

by Patrick Bishop

  Thanks to the efforts of Crawley’s traders, the escape-intelligence organization had obtained maps from German and Polish sources. They covered the surrounding area and also big centres like Warsaw and Danzig. The original maps were copied and duplicated using ink from boiled-down indelible pencils, and paper from the exercise books which were on sale in the camp canteen.3

  Danzig was an outpost of Germany. It had been separated from the Fatherland by the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, and Hitler had used the alleged mistreatment of the German population as one of his pretexts for going to war with Poland. In early 1943 it was back in the German fold, but among the population were many enemies of the Reich, including members of the Polish underground and French workers and prisoners of war.

  Several weeks before the latrine-tunnel breakout, those who would be taking part were given an initial intelligence briefing by Crawley on the general situation and the options that were open to them. The men, wrote Crowley, ‘many of them wearing beards and most of them showing signs of fatigue and strain, would crowd into one of the small lecture rooms of a wooden hut.’

  In front of them was a blackboard and on the wall a map… On one side of the blackboard was a plan of the camp and its surroundings and on the other some sketches of clouds or a genealogical tree, so that if a German came into the hut the ‘brief’ could turn at once into a lecture on navigation or ancient history.4

  Crawley’s intelligence was supplemented from some details provided by Harry Day. He had acquired it in tragic circumstances. Crawley had deputed a young pilot, Flying Officer Peter Lovegrove, who had been the only survivor when his Manchester bomber was shot down over Hamburg in April 1942, to help draw up maps of the local area.5 One day Lovegrove received some bad news from home. He climbed to the top of the White House where Harry Day had his office and shortly afterwards his body was found on the ground below. The Germans allowed him to be buried with full military honours in a nearby church and Day was in attendance. During the excursion he was able to reconnoitre many of the details that Lovegrove had been trying to map. An RAF document lists his death as due to ‘fall from window’.6 There was an obvious explanation. Even someone as resilient as Bill admitted that ‘there were few of us who did not at least think about suicide at some point in our captivity.’7

  As spring approached, though, spirits among the latrine-tunnel team were high. By the end of February the newly aligned tunnel was almost under the wire and the preparations for their onward flight were intensifying. The camp tailors were busy running up civilian clothing. Most of the escapers would be passing themselves off as foreign workers so would require only low-quality garments. The work of providing them was done by the Escape Clothing Department, which had been set up in September 1942. It was now under the control of Flight Lieutenant J. W. G. Paget, who oversaw a team of nine amateur tailors.

  The material they had to work with was not promising. The British government sent out uniforms via the Red Cross. Surplus items were kept in the Red Cross store in the camp, along with blankets, towels and sheets. Prisoners also received pullovers and suchlike in personal parcels from family and friends. Back in November, Day had asked Paget and his men to use the material to provide civilian escape clothing for forty prisoners.8 Tunics were modified to make jackets. The top pockets and lower pocket flaps were removed and the fabric shaved with a razor blade to make it look worn. They were then rubbed with chalk to make them a lighter blue or dyed a different colour.

  The Czech airman Josef Bryks was the most successful of the traders and had managed to persuade Polish contacts to supply large quantities of fabric dye. The clothing was boiled up in dixies borrowed from the kitchens in the camp washhouse. The same process was applied to trousers and service greatcoats. Civilian buttons obtained from Polish workers were used whenever possible.

  Each blanket could be turned into ten flat caps, with peaks stiffened by cardboard from Red Cross boxes. Kitbags were easily converted into haversacks. The pressing was done with an iron made from a Red Cross cake tin filled with hot sand.

  The finished clothing was stored in empty beer barrels from the camp canteen, which the carpenters fitted with false bottoms. Elaborate precautions were taken to give the team enough warning, when ferrets were on the prowl, to hide drying garments and remove all traces of the dye. Despite all the intense activity, the Germans discovered nothing.

  Even the most authentic clothing was no protection against German bureaucracy. Everywhere they conquered, the Nazis instituted an elaborate system of passes and identity cards to control their new subjects. Any escaper – and particularly those travelling by rail – needed a full set of the appropriate papers if he was to stand any chance of surviving the frequent checks. A ten-man forgery department had been set up in October 1942, under the control of Squadron Leader Dudley Craig. He decided that, rather than deal with the needs of each escape bid as it came up, he would build up a stockpile of standard documentation, based on originals obtained from sympathetic Poles or borrowed from compromised guards. He divided his department into three sections. One dealt with passes. They forged Ausweis identity cards covering a variety of different categories from originals obtained from Polish and German sources, and faked travel permits to go with them. All the documents were left blank for names and dates to be inserted just before departure.

  A second section produced headed notepaper for letters purporting to be from firms on whose behalf the holder was ostensibly travelling. The contents would match the cover story the escaper was intending to use on his travels. The paper was embossed and varnished and carried telephone numbers and the names of directors gleaned from advertisements in the German newspapers.

  The tools of forgery came from a variety of sources. The forgers persuaded – or blackmailed – a tame German to fill in the entries on some of the passes on a typewriter in the Kommandantur. Otherwise the writing was faked with a fine brush and paint, a long and laborious task. The paper, card, inks, pens and brushes for the tasks were acquired from ‘contacts’ or from the camp education section. Stamps were fashioned from boot-heel rubber and seals from painted paper, elaborately cut out with a razor.

  Without photographs, the passes were useless. What pictures the prisoners had of themselves tended to show them in service uniform, and if cropped too closely would arouse suspicion. The problem of how to produce new ones seemed likely to defeat even the kriegies’ boundless ingenuity. Once again the Poles came to the rescue. A Polish prisoner who had been flying with the RAF when shot down knew a girl who lived near Schubin. Through one of the local workers he managed to get a message to her explaining the situation. She provided the contact with a camera and films which were smuggled into the camp. Photographs were taken of each member of the escape team dressed in his getaway clothes. The camera and films were then returned to the girl. She developed and printed the film overnight, sending the photographs back to the camp next morning. This unknown heroine did all this in the knowledge that discovery would mean death.

  The effort, skill and risk involved in producing the paperwork was enormous, and great care was taken to safeguard the results. Some were placed in tightly sealed tins and buried in the gardens. Others were sewn in to medicine balls supplied by the Red Cross or the YMCA.

  For the ‘hard-arses’ who chose to walk to freedom, one piece of kit was essential. Two prisoners were charged with manufacturing compasses and managed to produce quite serviceable ones from unlikely materials. The cases were made from washbasin plugs, the tops from broken glass and the needles from razor blades which had been rubbed on magnets.

  Everyone would take at least a few days supply of food. The ‘mixture’ of chocolate, sugar, oatmeal and other high-energy fare devised by David Lubbock in Stalag Luft III had become the standard escapers’ food. Lubbock had moved to Schubin in the autumn of 1942 and was once again put in charge of nutrition. Amassing the ingredients was made easier by a system called ‘food-acco’, which operated in the ca
mp from November 1942. This enabled prisoners to exchange unwanted food from their Red Cross parcel for something they preferred. The profit in kind that resulted from these transactions was handed over to the escape food department.

  The breakout was set for early March. As the date approached, some alarming intelligence arrived from London. The prisoners stayed in contact with the authorities at home via letters carrying coded messages, sent back and forth between the camp and an organization called IS9. Intelligence School 9 was set up in January 1942 under the control of the War Office. Its purpose was to help British and Commonwealth soldiers and airmen caught behind enemy lines to evade capture. It was also tasked with providing escape materials to prisoners of war and gathering and imparting intelligence. IS9 was hampered by a lack of resources and was resented by MI6 and the Special Operations Executive, who felt it was poaching on their territory. It nonetheless managed to communicate with the camps via an efficient system of coded letters. Designated prisoners would write to their families, passing on in code whatever information the camp intelligence service had gathered. IS9 operatives would then insert messages into the families’ replies. In 1943 nearly a thousand coded letters were sent from London to camps in Europe. More than 3,500 messages were received by IS9 during the same period.9

  The organization also sent escape material hidden in welfare packages. They decided against using Red Cross parcels, which would have breached the Geneva Convention and invited reprisals. Instead they invented fictitious charities, such as the ‘Lancashire Penny Fund’, which despatched comforts, board games and the like, some of which contained compasses, maps, forged passes and local currency. The organization’s operatives revelled in devising ingenious hiding places. A consignment of Christmas crackers contained maps, and a batch of shaving soap contained compasses. Some of the contraband was useful, some less so. What was particularly welcome was money, and in 1943 the organization would smuggle 147,200 Reichsmarks to the camps.

  As the countdown began for the escape, Day received a message via coded letter from IS9, warning him that the Germans were planning to move all the inhabitants of Schubin back to Stalag Luft III. If true, this was very bad news. Unless they acted quickly, all the effort expended on the latrine project would be in vain.

  There was no time to lose. The tunnel was due to be finished on 3 March. They decided to make the break two days later, when there would be virtually no moon. Once the date had been set, the air of unreality that invariably hung over tunnelling projects evaporated. The enterprise project had buoyed the spirits of all who took part in it throughout the long, hard winter, offering the prospect of deliverance. But to some, the digging and the shoring and the endless subterfuges to outwit the ferrets were more of a therapy than a practical exercise. ‘It seemed impossible that it would ever lead to an escape,’ wrote Robert Kee. ‘No one really thought about that very much. It was all just a daily routine to be worked through.’10

  Now the moment had arrived. On the eve of the big day the air was charged with excitement tinged with apprehension. Tommy Calnan, who arrived back at his barrack after two weeks in hospital recovering from appendicitis, just in time to take his place, recognized the atmosphere immediately: ‘It reminded me of the briefing room before a big operation,’ he wrote. ‘Part fear, part excitement, with the inevitable reaction on stomach and temper.’11

  The escapers had had plenty of time to think about what they were going to do once they left the tunnel. Calnan suspected that some had not really devoted much attention to the realities of life on the run. Too many were ‘suffering from wire psychosis. They had a compelling impulse to get outside the fence. At that point, however, their thinking stopped. From then on it was a matter of luck and providence. They had no plans.’12

  Almost everyone felt the need to travel with someone else. Bill was one of many who had experienced the loneliness of wandering enemy territory alone, without a companion to buttress morale and fight off despair. Over the last weeks and days, by the mysterious processes of human chemistry, most people were now paired off.

  Bill and Eddie Asselin had spent months side by side clawing at the Polish subsoil. It seemed right that they should continue together. As the spearhead of the tunnel team it also seemed just that they should be first in the queue of escapers. The rest would have to draw lots. The number of those going had expanded. Day had decided that for services rendered to kriegiedom, another eight, nominated by the escape committee, were to be included. This provoked some initial grumbling from Calnan and others but was eventually accepted with reasonably good grace. One way or another the late additions had earned their place. They included Jimmy Buckley, the chairman of the escape committee, who devoted all his waking hours to the job, Johnny Dodge, the veteran kriegie who had jumped off the train on the way to Schubin, and Day himself, who was bringing along Dudley Craig, the genius behind the forgery department, as his escape partner.

  Calnan conceded that Day’s presence brought moral authority to the enterprise. ‘Daily and relentlessly he fought the Germans with the few weapons he could use,’ he wrote. ‘Escape was the most telling weapon he had. Coming out of the tunnel with us was both a gesture of defiance and a declaration of war.’13

  Apart from the main organizers, who were guaranteed a place at the front, the order in which people lined up in the tunnel would be decided by drawing names from a hat. The nearer the front the better, for it increased your chances of getting away before the alarm was raised and reduced the time spent in suffocating darkness awaiting your turn to creep forward.

  As the hours ticked away the escapers tried on their civilian outfits and checked their identity passes and paperwork. As well as the forged documentation they would also be carrying their identity discs, well hidden but ready to be produced if they fell into the hands of the Gestapo. The slim wafer could mean the difference between life and death. Without it they would have no proof that they were combatants protected by the Geneva Convention, and would be liable to be shot as spies. There was time still to run over plans. It did not do to reflect too hard on their defects, for it was too late to change them now.

  Bill and Eddie had decided to head for Warsaw, where they hoped to make contact with the Polish underground. They would travel by foot, trusting that if they were detected by the local people they would not be given away. Bill already had good reason to trust in the kindness of strangers from his experiences in France. He also knew very well the risks those who helped him had run. The Germans had even fewer scruples about how to deal with Poles who helped their enemies than they did towards the French. It was a sobering thought amid all the bubbling excitement.

  Paddy Barthropp was another ‘hard-arse’. He would be travelling with an old comrade, Wilf Wise. Like Ash and Asselin they were heading to Warsaw. Their plan was certainly ambitious. ‘We had learned, via the grapevine, a Heinkel III had force-landed in Yugoslavia and was in the hands of General Draža Mihailović, leader of the Chetniks, a patriotic partisan group,’ he wrote. ‘The plan was for six of us, moving in pairs, to make our way to Warsaw to be handed down through the underground movement and to fly the aircraft to the Middle East.’14

  Aidan Crawley had opted for the train. He believed that self-assurance was the best protection and had adopted the role of a travelling engineer working for the giant German steel company Krupp, an imposture given substance by a beautifully forged letter. His companion for the first part of the escape was Flying Officer Stevens. That was not his real name. He had been born a Jew in Germany and had joined the RAF after his family fled to Britain.

  Tommy Calnan’s first choice had been Tony Barber, a fellow photo-reconnaissance pilot from RAF Benson, who had been shot down over France the year before and who he regarded as being exceptionally resourceful and determined. Barber, though, had set his mind on heading for Denmark, where he had close relatives. Calnan was equally bent on going west to Switzerland or France, in the hope of finding his way eventually to Spain. Neither wou
ld budge and Calnan fell back on Robert Kee, who had ‘all the qualities and talents which a successful escaper needed. Nothing took him by surprise and he was never at a loss for an answer… with his fluent German I had no doubt at all that he would be able to dominate any conversation, even with a suspicious German policemen.’15 Calnan was henceforth Tomasso Calabresi, an Italian technician also employed by Krupp. The burns he had sustained to his face after being shot down would explain why he was not in uniform and doing his bit for the Axis. The cover story was that had been invalided out of the Italian army after his tank was hit by British artillery in North Africa. Kee would be his French sidekick.

  There were bursts of nervous hilarity as they checked out each other’s escape gear. The tailoring department had done a superb job. Out of tunics, trousers, blankets and sheets they had fashioned a range of outfits to cover the roles that the escapers were playing, from engineer to itinerant labourer. They were a little threadbare, perhaps, but that in itself gave them a patina of authenticity. It was wartime and most people not in uniform looked shabby.

  At lunchtime on 5 March the draw was made for the lineup in the tunnel. Like Bill Ash and Eddie Asselin, Bill Palmer and Charles Marshall were exempted, and would be third and fourth in line. When it was over and everybody had their number, Marshall stepped forward to detail the arrangements. The final Appell was at five o’clock, when the inmates would have to line up outside their barracks to be counted. Lights out, when everyone had to be back inside, was not until 7 p.m., however. That gave the escapers time to drift down to the Abort in groups of four at ten-minute intervals so as not to arouse attention.

  Marshall’s authoritative voice laid out the orders. Knapsacks and attaché cases were to be delivered to the Abort before the final Appell for storage in the entrance chamber to the tunnel. They were to wear their escape clothes hidden beneath a greatcoat, which was to be discarded on arrival at the Abort and carried back by one of those who were staying behind. Cases were to be pushed in front when crawling along the tunnel. Marshall asked Asselin if he had anything to add to the instructions. Asselin had. Some of the escapers had been engaged in other duties and had yet to experience the tunnel. It was not going to be easy inching along it fully dressed and pushing a bag. The technique was to fight your way along with your toes, knees and elbows. What they emphatically were not to do was to grab at the shoring planks for leverage. A dislodged strut could bring the whole tunnel down killing everyone. He signed off with a cheery ‘See you in Shepherds!’ – a reference to a London club popular with aircrew.