By the morning Barber was sure he had made the right decision. He arrived in Bromberg after walking along the railway line. To play his part he needed to keep neat and tidy, a good Danish Nazi who took a proper pride in his appearance. After tidying up his clothes and giving his muddy shoes a polish with the brush and cloth he had brought with him for the purpose, he looked convincing enough as walked into the station. He had enough money to ask for a return ticket, which he believed would look less suspicious than buying a single. Nevertheless, ‘it was with some trepidation that I went up to the ticket office and said: “ Schneidemühl, hin und zurück, bitte” [a round-trip ticket to Schneidemühl, please].’15 The clerk took the note and pushed the tickets under the glass. Barber thanked him and strolled out onto the platform. Everything was going very well.
Paddy Barthropp and Wilf Wise intended to cover twenty miles before dawn broke, a march that would take them over the river Oder. They managed it quite comfortably. With dawn streaking the sky they looked around for somewhere to shelter and sleep. The only possibility was a stone quarry, which seemed to have been abandoned. It was hardly ideal but it would have to do. They dug themselves a burrow out of the loose shale and fell asleep immediately.
Back at Schubin, the morning began as any other. At 8 a.m. the prisoners filed out of the barrack blocks and lined up in files of five for morning Appell. There was no possibility of disguising the huge holes in the kriegies’ ranks. The number of escapers had increased overnight. Three more officers had decided earlier that morning to take advantage of the tunnel before it was filled in. Josef Bryks had also put his plan to exit the camp via the honeywagon into practice. Dressed in protective overalls and wearing gauze masks soaked in disinfectant, he and Squadron Leader B. G. Morris had climbed into the cleaned-out sewage tank and been driven through the gates by the Polish contractor and taken to a local farmhouse, where they were given shelter.
At first Simms thought that the prisoners must be playing a practical joke and the missing men were hidden somewhere in the camp. When it became clear that they had gone the klaxons sounded and the compound echoed to angry shouts and barking dogs. It took the Germans a while to find the tunnel exit. The next thing was to discover the entrance. A Russian prisoner was ordered to tie a rope round his body then crawl back down the tunnel. When he finally scrambled into the chamber he alerted the guards by banging on the concrete underside of the latrine. Shortly afterwards pickaxes crashed through the ceiling and the ingenious beauty of the latrine tunnel was exposed.
The large number involved in the escape made the Germans suspect that something more than a mere bid for freedom was involved. The idea began to gain ground that the breakout had been engineered from London. The authorities believed the prisoners planned to form a fighting cadre who would stay in place to direct an uprising by the Polish underground. The prisoners were long gone but it was nonetheless decided to reinforce the camp. At 11 a.m., busloads of SS troops arrived. After inspecting the tunnel exit they formed up and marched into the camp, to be greeted by derisive cheers from a crowd of delighted kriegies. The SS men turned them out of their barracks and began a search. The prisoners left them to it and went off to play football. The SS troops were new to the business of camp security. They made a half-hearted trawl through the barracks then moved on. They left undisturbed the rival tunnel started by Dickie Edge back in December, which had caused the escapers such concern. It now stretched forty feet from its starting point under a night latrine. Later that day the troops departed. German pride was hurting. The escape had made them look stupid and inefficient. Every effort was now directed at finding the escapers and returning them to captivity.
TEN
By noon thousands of soldiers, German militiamen and Hitler Youth were combing the countryside around the camp, prodding haystacks and searching barns in the hope of flushing out an Allied flier. All bridges and crossroads were guarded and motor and foot patrols roamed the roads. Police swarmed over the railway stations and train passengers were subjected to multiple identity checks. Frontier guards as far away as Belgium and Switzerland were warned to be extra vigilant and the Baltic ports were put on high alert. The wires hummed as images of the fugitives were transmitted to police stations and border posts.
Those who had chosen to escape on foot were finding that geography was against them. Warsaw, where most of the ‘hard-arses’ were heading, lay 180 miles to the south-east. The most direct road was on the far side of the Vistula, the bridges across which were heavily guarded. The alternative route meant zigzagging along country lanes and trekking across fields. They had already learned how difficult it was to make progress that way. The chances of getting lost were high, and of detection even higher.
Bill and Eddie spent most of their first day of freedom hiding in a wood. As night fell they became aware of the hue and cry that had been raised by their departure. Beyond the cover of the trees, the area was crawling with Germans. The pair were forced to ‘sit perfectly still as what seemed like half of Germany passed within a few feet of us, shouting and beating bushes, waving flashlights. When they had passed by we moved quietly on.’1
Despite the dangers the taste of liberty was intoxicating. ‘The feeling you get from being free after so many months when the barbed wire at the edge of the camp represents the limits of your horizons is like no other freedom,’ he wrote. ‘Never before have I felt so alive.’ There was also some satisfaction to be had from the sheer scale of the German effort to recapture them. Every soldier who was employed looking for fugitive airmen had been diverted from more useful war work, and there were thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – now engaged in the hunt. It made men who had been languishing impotently behind barbed wire feel that they were once again engaged in the battle against Hitler. Nonetheless the going was tough. Spring came late this far east and their improvised civilian clothing was little protection against the rain, wind and cold. That night they took shelter in a large barn, hoping that if they were discovered the owners would not turn them in. They did not have to worry. Over the next days they had several encounters with farmers and their families, who shared what food they had with men who they regarded as their allies in humanity. Bill and Eddie never knew the names of their saviours. They did not want to know. Bill understood what it was to undergo a Gestapo interrogation. If you knew nothing, there was nothing to give up if the blows and threats became too much. The truth was that the risk the escapers were taking did not compare with that embraced by any Polish civilian who took the decision to help them. Unless a POW was shot while making a run for it, he was unlikely at this stage to face anything worse than a spell in the cooler. For the Poles it meant interrogation, torture and the firing squad.
One night trek brought them to a wide river, a tributary of the Vistula. To get to Warsaw they would have to cross it. They followed the bank until they came to a road leading to a bridge that spanned the river. They knew the bridge would be guarded and for a while considered continuing along the bank on the chance of finding a quieter place to cross. It was a vain hope.
Neither of them could bear the thought of swimming across. They would have to take their chances on the bridge. There was one sentry posted at each end but they seemed to prefer the shelter of their sentry boxes, only occasionally emerging to march up and down in the cold.
They waited until both were back inside their boxes then scuttled to the parapet of the bridge, dropped to the ground and started to crawl. The night was silent. It seemed to them as they inched their way forward that their laboured breathing and the scrape of toecaps on tarmac must surely alert the sentries. But all remained quiet. As they approached the guard post on the far side, a bulky figure emerged. He walked over to the parapet and leant over. They both froze, struggling to control their breathing. He was no more than twenty feet away. It seemed impossible that he would not see them. The guard, though, seemed sunk in his own thoughts. After several minutes staring into the dark waters he turned away and disap
peared back into his shelter. Bill and Eddie wriggled past and were swallowed up in the shadows on the far bank.
Since setting off, Paddy and Wilf had been having their own share of dramas. After an uncomfortable night in the quarry they stretched their stiff limbs and started out once again. They had given up on travelling in darkness and by the end of the day had abandoned the idea of walking altogether. On the afternoon of 7 March, after two clear days of travel, they reached the town which the Germans called Hohensalza and the Poles Inowrocław. It was only twenty-five miles south-east of Schubin. At this rate they would never make it to Warsaw. They began to think again. A main railway line ran through the town, going east to Warsaw and west to Posen (Poznań). They crept into the sidings and hid, looking for a goods train that was going in the direction of Warsaw. A locomotive was shunting a line of wagons with ‘Kutno’ chalked on the side. Their map told them that Kutno was about sixty miles to the south-east and well on the way to Warsaw. The train stopped and started, going back and forth as additional wagons were coupled up. They darted closer, waiting for the engine to stop long enough for them to climb aboard. The train kept moving off just as they approached, forcing them to dive back into cover. Eventually they were able to wrench open the doors of a wagon and scramble in. They sat back to enjoy the journey to Kutno.
Tommy Calnan and Robert Kee had bickered all the way to Bromberg. When they arrived at the station they were bickering still. Calnan had urged Kee to make sure he was wearing decent footwear when they made their escape. Kee had neglected the advice and as they entered the town, the sole of his boot had come unstuck and the pair attracted many curious looks as he flapped along. When they reached the station the booking hall was crowded. They felt less conspicuous now. Many of the passengers were as badly dressed as themselves. Calnan went to buy two tickets to Schneidemühl, seventy-five miles to the west, where, according to his study of the timetables, they could get an onward connection. The transaction went off easily.
There were several hours to wait before the train was due. They had no idea whether or not the alarm had yet been raised in Schubin, but it was best to be on the safe side. They decided to hide in the lavatories. They locked themselves into adjoining cubicles. A few minutes later Kee was startled to see a sheet of lavatory paper appear under the partition wall with a biscuit and a slice of cheese and a scrawled note: ‘For the morale’. He accepted it gratefully and pushed a note back: ‘Thanks’. Then he ate the biscuit and stared at the pornographic drawings on the wall. He was dog tired and fatigue made him gloomy. A phrase his grandmother was fond of kept echoing through his head: ‘Where will it all end, my dear, where will it all end?’2
He ‘began to be frightened in a new way, a way that was no longer either amusing or exciting… Perhaps it was because we were quite trapped if anything should go wrong… now I began to understand the full strength of our enemy. It was no longer just a matter of a few guards to be outwitted. A whole society was against us and for practical purposes that meant all society, the whole world.’
The main door of the lavatory swung open. They both heard the swish of a mop. Calnan was still munching his escape rations when the door of his cubicle rattled violently. Then it flew open. He ‘stared aghast at a fat, dirty woman who stood there with a bucket and mop. She gave me a contemptuous look and slammed the door shut again.’3 He felt more embarrassed being caught with his trousers up than down. It seemed a highly suspicious way to be occupying a public lavatory. Next it was Kee’s turn. As the charlady shook the door he rustled the lavatory paper, hoping she would leave him alone, but the cleaner was having none of it. She stopped rattling the door and began kicking it. Kee and Calnan exited with as much dignity as they could muster and headed for the relative safety of the platform.
They sat down on a bench, willing the hands on the station clock to move faster. Kee read a newspaper. Calnan covertly observed the other passengers. One in particular caught his eye. He was ‘wearing a neat blue-grey raincoat, carrying an attaché case and had a folded newspaper tucked under his arm. He looked like a superior bank clerk.’ Calnan felt that there was ‘something vaguely familiar about him’. It was only when he passed right by that he recognized him. It was Tony Barber.
Barber recognized him too but rapidly turned away. Some irrational impulse took hold of Calnan. ‘I could not resist getting up to greet him. His look of panic when he saw me coming should have discouraged me, but I was enjoying the moment too much. I gave him a nicely casual Nazi salute and greeted him.
‘“Heil Hitler,” I said.’
Barber was forced to snap a salute in response. Calnan then shook his hand and told him how delighted he was to see him. He got a brusque response. ‘“Go to hell,” said Tony. He was shaking with anger. “And stay away from me. You look like a tramp.”’ Then, smiling and bowing, he retreated down the platform to make sure he was as far away as possible from Calnan and Kee. The Schneidemühl train arrived and they all got aboard.
Aidan Crawley’s good luck was holding. He was still confident that he had taken the right decision in going it alone. On the afternoon of his first day of freedom he arrived at the house of the Polish family who he had been told were prepared to give him sanctuary. There were three of them. Pete Kowalski was a former cavalry officer who was active in the resistance. His wife Tanja was ‘a loyal and delightful woman’, who kept the farm going during his frequent absences. The couple had an 18-year-old daughter, Kate.4 His hosts seemed unperturbed by the fact that German soldiers were billeted less than a mile away. They were heart-warmingly hospitable, feeding him and taking away his clothes to dry them. He spent the night in their barn and the next morning was directed to a bus stop from where he could get a bus to the town of Nakel (in Polish Nakło nad Notecia) sixteen miles from Bromberg. He spent the morning in the park while waiting for a train to take him to Schneidemühl. His papers identified him as a Sudeten German schoolteacher who was being transferred to Berlin. They were checked twice on the journey but the quality of the forgery and Crawley’s excellent German were enough to satisfy the guard. It was clear that the alarm had been raised. As the train rocked along placidly he could see lines of soldiers moving methodically through fields at the side of the track like beaters at a pheasant shoot, scouring the land for escaped prisoners.
There was another wait at Schneidemühl for the next train westwards. Again he went off to the local park to kill time. It was full of people taking the air, including some German officers and their wives. He was wearing his RAF officer’s greatcoat, suitably civilianized by the camp’s tailors. ‘My word that is a smart overcoat,’ he heard one women say to her husband as they passed.5 It was a light moment in an experience that was getting steadily darker for all the fugitives.
After four days living rough, Bill Ash and Eddie Asselin were exhausted, dirty and starving. Their escape rations had long gone. Occasionally they managed to beg food from farmhouses. They learned to avoid the more prosperous looking ones, knowing that the likelihood was that they were occupied by ethnic German families who had been settled in the area for centuries and would be delighted to turn them in. They were making very slow progress. They had stuck to the routine of lying up by day and walking by night, relying on their compass and maps to point them in the right direction. They followed deserted country roads when they could, taking to the fields to skirt villages. On the evening of Tuesday, 9 March they set off as usual and had been walking for five hours when they came to a railway crossing. It was very dark and quiet and there seemed to be no one around. They were about to follow the track when they heard footsteps behind them. They swung round to see a man pointing a rifle at them. He commanded them in German to stop. There was no chance of making a run for it. They raised their hands and prepared to trot out their rehearsed story. The man was a member of the local home guard. He had been posted at the railway crossing with specific orders to look out for escaped prisoners. Bill and Eddie explained in their best camp German that they wer
e French workmen employed in the railway yards at Kraków. Somehow they had lost their way. They produced their forged papers identifying them as foreign workers. The story sounded lame even as they recited it. Kraków was about 250 miles to the south. The guard was apologetic but firm. He had orders to hand over anyone who seemed remotely suspicious to the Gestapo. The nearest headquarters was Hohensalza. The guard summoned reinforcements and they set off. By now the ethnic German population was in a ferment of excitement over the manhunt. At one stage on the journey they were confronted by a crowd of farm workers brandishing pitchforks. A woman among them seemed keen for the guards to shoot the captives on the spot, and when they refused tried to wrestle a rifle off one of them to carry out the execution herself.
Before they reached Hohensalza they managed to get rid of compass, maps and forged identity papers, anything that would reveal to the Germans the sophistication of the escape organization. Their time with the Gestapo was mercifully short. Once they had established who their captives were, they passed them over to the police, who locked them up in the local jail. It was already full up with pimps, thieves and black-marketeers as well as deserters from the Germany army. It was an ignominious end to the great adventure. Eddie felt the failure acutely. The latrine tunnel had been his life for the past few months. With Bill he had planned the project, promoted it and done much of the digging. All this effort had ended in bathos, and he was a prisoner once again, locked up in a cell only twenty-seven miles from where he had broken out. As he lay on his bunk bed he told Bill that the experience had turned him against further attempts. He would not be joining the ranks of obsessive ‘escapologists’ like Bill and the Dodger. When they returned to camp he would use his considerable energies in other ways – ones that made it more likely that he would live to see the end of the war. ‘I did not press him,’ wrote Bill. ‘Each man had to decide for himself what was right in terms of the balance between suffering and defiance, between risk and foolhardiness.’6
The Cooler King Page 15
