The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  Soon after the outbreak of World War I, the 48th Pioneers embarked from Bombay with the 6th (Poona) division of the British Indian Army. Their transport ship steamed up the Persian Gulf and anchored at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, the river created from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. The British needed to ensure a steady supply of oil from Mesopotamia. For that, they had to maintain dominance in the region, first by wresting control of Basra from the Turks. Within days of the Pioneers’ arrival, Gray led a machine-gun company in a fierce fight to take Kut-az-Zain, a fort manned by forty-five hundred Turks that protected the advance toward Basra. Although slowed by torrential rains and a mirage that confounded the artillery, the British division cleared the fort. Gray thrived in his first test of combat. The division then forced-marched thirty miles across the desert to take Basra from the fleeing Turks.

  The town of sixty thousand Muslims and Christians, located amid palm groves and tidal waterways, was essentially a level patch of land that flooded twice a day. There was little potable water and no infrastructure to encamp an army. Between sporadic fights with the Turks, the 48th Pioneers labored against the alluvial mud to make Basra habitable—and secure—for their division.

  In spring 1915 Allied biplanes of the newly founded Indian Royal Flying Corps soared over Basra, scouting Turkish movements in the deserts to the north. Like many others in the army, the sight inspired Gray. Here were masters of the air, flying engineered marvels able to evade or engage the enemy on their own terms. As an RFC historian noted, the war most soldiers were fighting fell far short of the heroic tales of old. “There were no gleaming rows of Lancers, no saber charges of Hussars and Dragoons, no epic stands of the Thin Red Line, no stirrup charges staged by the Scots Greys and Black Watch . . . It was drab khaki, mud, blood, and apparently there was no end to the carnage. Only the bright-blue sky seemed worth fighting for.”

  Later that year, Gray returned to London to claim a spot in the RFC flight school at Hendon. The air force was desperate for men of his background, and he was able to answer a definitive yes to the question “Do you ride?” After earning his wings in January 1916, he distinguished himself flying for a Home Defense squadron, then another in France, before the elite No. 11 recruited him to its fighter ranks. He was schooled in dogfighting by Albert Ball, Britain’s most famous ace. Soon he became a flight leader, known in the squadron for his preternatural calm.

  After a dismal breakfast in the mess hall, Gray and Helder took off in their trusted Farman Experimental FE2b. Helder, who had been slated for a musical scholarship at Cambridge before the war, was an experienced observer, and he and Gray made a fine team. Their British-built two-seater, with its V-shaped structure, stab of a tailplane, and 160-horsepower engine, had served them well on numerous missions. It carried colored streamers on the tail to mark it as the escort leader.

  Minutes after clearing the aerodrome, the plane’s engine began to knock, and Gray signaled the five other escorts to return. Ground crews prepared another FE, this one new, fresh off the factory line. To the RFC, though, “new” meant untested and prone to fault. Gray ascended into the air again, this time without much confidence in his machine, but because of a low fog the run was postponed again, and they returned to base.

  At 9:30 a.m. he lifted off from Le Hameau for the third time. His friend Lionel Morris, with whom he had learned to fly, was second lead. The sky was now clear and bright. As they circled at ten thousand feet, awaiting the arrival of the bombers, they could spy the white cliffs of Dover in the distance. Although it was wonderful to see their homeland, the clear skies guaranteed attack from German fighters, and the lack of clouds meant an absence of places to hide.

  To the north, Helder sighted the dozen bombers from the No. 16 Squadron. They were slow but sturdy BE2cs carrying 20- and 112-pound “eggs” under their carriages. Gray waggled his wings, the signal for Morris and the other escort pilots to tighten into a diamond formation. A red flare from the lead bomber indicated the mission was a go. With Marcoing thirty-five miles away, the journey would be short.

  Before crossing the front, Helder fired his Lewis gun to warm up its action. No sooner had their ears stopped ringing from their own gunfire when bursts of Archie surrounded them. All the planes sailed unharmed through the barrage. As they continued eastward, no German attackers materialized, and after a short time they spotted the sun’s reflection shining from the railway track that ran to Marcoing. Perhaps fortune was shining on them and the run would come off without interference.

  The bombers were below them, at six thousand feet, and they now zeroed in on the railway junction. Gray maintained his escort’s position above, where they could prevent any diving attacks from the enemy. All his crews kept a sharp eye out.

  The eggs dropped one after the next over Marcoing. Explosions rocked the air and sent up mushroom clouds of black smoke. One must have hit an ammunition dump, because the resulting blast jolted its bomber upward in a column of smoke and flying debris. The pilot recovered and—job well done by all—the bomber squadron turned back toward the west.

  Gray and the other escorts circled over the junction one last time, and seeing no fighters, turned to follow the bombers home. Then: “Fokkers!” Helder screamed through the rush of air. Suddenly the sky was alive with planes emblazoned with the black Iron Cross, swooping in from the blind of the sun. Flying their newly arrived Albatros fighters, Böelcke and his Jagdstaffel drove home the surprise attack. One British bomber was ripped to pieces before it could take evasive maneuvers.

  Gray banked, then dove downward to protect the others, thinking nothing of his own safety. Watching the Fokkers for any change in their direction, he gauged his angle of descent to maximize the FE’s arc of fire. Knees braced against the sides of the cockpit, Helder stood on his seat to man the Lewis gun. Its spit of bullets, and those from other FEs, cut through the air. An Albatros exploded into a ball of flame. Gray and Helder’s quick and courageous actions gave the other bombers the seconds they needed to escape to the west.

  Now the scarlet-and-black Albatros formation cartwheeled around to focus on the six escort fighters. Assembled in batches, they swarmed the British with the bewildering force and speed that would later earn the Jagdstaffel its sobriquet, the Flying Circus. A close-quarter rake of bullets from Böelcke ripped through Gray’s engine and shredded an aileron. Propeller stopped, balance control lost, the plane plummeted into a spin. Böelcke hounded them as Gray tried to recover, and Helder hung on to a strut to avoid being flung out. The German ace continued to target the escort leader, the quickest way to throw the British into disarray, and emptied his drum on the falling plane. Bullets punctured the petrol tank and shredded a wing. The plane rendered useless, its pilot having little chance to survive such a stalled plunge, Böelcke swung away to single out another fighter. The others in the Jagdstaffel swerved and sideslipped through the air in an elegant but deadly pursuit. One of them, Richthofen, aiming for his first victory, chased after Morris, the second lead of the British squadron.

  Meanwhile, ground approaching, the world a dizzying swirl of sky and black smoke, Gray fought the unwieldy controls of his FE to recover from the spin. Nothing worked. The altimeter quickly spun downward: 4,000 feet . . . 3,000 . . . 2,000. Gray wrenched the stick back and forth and pressed on the foot controls to adjust the rudder, yet the plane spiraled toward the ground as petrol sprayed from its punctured tank: 1,000 feet . . . 500 feet. Still Gray struggled to regain control.

  With a sudden calm, the plane stopped its corkscrew and Gray leveled out. He attempted to restart the engine, but it was shot dead. Moments later, he crash-landed into a field crowded with German infantry and a reconnaissance balloon. Face lacerated with cuts, arm broken, he crawled out of the plane. Helder also survived the crash. A match ensured the FE, already soaked with petrol, quickly lit up in flames. A safe distance from the blaze, soldiers encircled the British airmen. A gray-haired officer approached, his Luger leveled at their heads. Gray and He
lder raised their arms. “You are my prisoners, gentlemen,” he said in proper English as their plane broke apart in the flames.

  At that moment, overhead, Richthofen put one last burst of bullets into the plane flown by Morris. It fell sideways and crashed behind some trees, five hundred yards from where Gray and Helder stood, unable to do anything but watch. Their German captor kept his pistol trained on them, seemingly confused over what to do next. “Mind if we put our hands down?” Gray asked, too much in pain, too distressed over seeing his friend go down, to care much about the danger his words might put him in.

  Once reassured they were unarmed, the officer directed them to lower their arms. He introduced himself as Müller and asked them some questions, then led them to a truck at the edge of the field. They were driven off toward nearby Cambrai. On the way, they came upon Morris’s FE, half-buried in a road embankment. A crowd of German soldiers had gathered around the plane, which was now a grim tangle of wire, torn cloth, and splintered wood.

  Müller told his driver to stop the truck. Gray could not see Morris, but his observer was still in the cockpit, clearly dead. Gray insisted on knowing the pilot’s fate. Müller made some inquiries and learned that an ambulance had taken a severely injured Morris to hospital. With that, the truck continued to the citadel.

  Gray remained quiet for the short ride. He blamed himself for the devastation of his squadron. As much as he had prepared them for the mission, as much as he had tried to do everything right, the Germans had bested him, and his crews had paid a dear price. For a man like Gray, raised in the army tradition of “Fix bayonets and die like British soldiers do!” capture was a black mark of shame akin to desertion or a self-inflicted wound. He had no choice except surrender, but that did not lessen the blow.

  At Cambrai, a medic set Gray’s broken arm, then soldiers hustled him and Helder through the stone fortress, down a narrow, dark stairwell to the cellars—just as they had done with Cecil Blain six weeks before. “The war is over for you,” one said in English. Other soldiers spoke to Gray in German, but not once did he let on that he understood them. Ever present of mind, he knew his proficiency in the language would be an advantage if it remained hidden. The soldiers put him and Helder into a large cell with double-tier wooden bunks. It was already occupied by several crews from the Marcoing run and also, to their great relief, the two No. 11 Squadron officers who had not returned from their mission the day before. At least they were alive.

  The next day, the interrogations started. Neither Gray nor his countrymen gave away any information despite questions about their squadrons, their planes, aerodrome locations, how they communicated target positions with artillery battalions on the ground. Afterward, they were returned to their cells to stew.

  The following morning, waking up on a straw mattress, the fastidious Gray was disgusted to find his shirt populated by lice. Later, several Jagdstaffel officers visited the British crews to gloat. The Germans’ bandbox blue-gray parade uniforms struck a contrast to their own soiled, bloodied outfits, further darkening the mood in the cell. Their demoralization turned to despair when more RFC crews arrived, having been shot down by the Jagdstaffel. Then the news came that Lionel Morris and another pilot had died in the hospital. Their deaths came as a terrible blow to Gray.

  On September 26 he and the others were marched out of Cambrai and onto a third-class train carriage headed for Germany. They stopped in Douai, Valenciennes, Brussels, Liège, and other towns, the battered ruins affording them a close look at the effects of war. Everything looked shrouded in a veil of gloom, and the streets were crowded with pale-faced widows dressed in black. At Aachen, they knew they were finally across the German border. During a particularly slow crawl from station to station, one pilot made an effort at humor, joking, “Why do so many stations have the same name? I’ve seen several called ‘Ausgang’!” In Cologne, they were allowed to disembark and follow those exit signs from the train platform, but only to sit for hours in an underground waiting room while German civilians eyed them as if they were a pestilence.

  Finally, another train brought them to Gütersloh. In the quarantine building, Block H, Gray surveyed his new surroundings, which were suitably better than Cambrai and much less secure. From what prisoners working in the building said, the commandant was reasonable, the food decent, and they were even allowed to play tennis. Gray drew Helder aside and, in an even tone, suggested that the time was right to plan an escape. The thought of remaining a prisoner through to the end of the war was something Gray could not abide.

  But on September 29, before their ten-day quarantine period ended, soldiers escorted Gray and Helder back to the local railway station. Already corralled on the train were twenty-six other Gütersloh prisoners, all of them RFC. Demands to know the reason for their assembly—and their destination—were met with silence.

  The train clanked its way northward. Gray was seated across from a young pilot he had never met: Cecil Blain. Gray watched as Blain engaged in a whispered conversation with his seatmate. A guard, suspicious of their conspiratorial tone, stomped over and began haranguing the two prisoners in German. Blain pantomimed both innocence and incomprehension, as if involved in an elaborate game of charades. The guard attempted to silence him, but Blain continued to gesticulate wildy until finally bursting out in laughter. The vexed guard slammed his rifle butt between the pilot’s feet, shouted a few words of warning, and strode off. Blain then shared with his seatmate the gist of what the guard had said. Gray took note of all of this, appreciating Blain’s cleverness in hiding his understanding of German. The man had spirit.

  Several hours later, the train pulled into Osnabrück station, and the airmen plodded through the streets in a cold downpour to the edge of town. Guards drew them up in a line beside a twelve-foot-high brick wall. A gate cut into the wall was opened from the inside, and they were led into a narrow graveled courtyard. Before them stood a four-story barracks.

  Once inside, Gray and the others learned that their party comprised almost the sum total of British POWs held there. The others were French and Russian. Locked together in a single room, its windows painted white and nailed shut, the twenty-eight men awaited what was to come. They were segregated from the other prisoners, and the condemnatory looks of their guards, who brought the sparest of meals—raw fish and gherkins—began to fester worry.

  When Gray, the senior British officer among them, asked why they were not in the general barracks with the other prisoners, and when they might be joining them, he was told simply, “I don’t know. Tomorrow perhaps.” Rumors, then information supplied to them by the prison commandant, Captain Blankenstein, proved they had just cause for concern.

  On September 3, RFC pilot William Leefe Robinson had destroyed a Zeppelin airship flying high over North London—the first time a German airship had been downed on such a bombing raid. Its sixteen crew members, young men mostly in their early twenties, went down with the flaming ship. In retribution, the German high command intended to put twice that number of British airmen in front of a firing squad.

  Four

  October 9, 1916. It was to be a short flight, his first in France. Caspar Kennard intended only to feel out his BE2c reconnaissance plane and get his bearings around Saint-Omer. Air mechanic Ben Digby, whose oil-smeared face looked barely old enough to manage a beard, accompanied as observer—and guide, since he had been fixing planes at the RFC’s main aerodrome for several months and knew the area well.

  Minutes after takeoff, Kennard was already in trouble. The engine was rattling as they headed southeastward; he could not coax the plane to climb higher than two thousand feet. From the forward cockpit, Digby turned to signal they were crossing over the trenches at an altitude that put them in range of small-arms fire. They needed to circle back. As Kennard banked around, the plane was consumed by a huge cloud. Wisps of murky white vapor blinded him and he lost all sense of direction. Again he throttled up the engine, hoping to climb into clear skies, but the plane would not
respond.

  Then, in an instant, they were free of the cloud only to discover themselves straight over the enemy trench lines, low enough to see individual German soldiers. There was no escape. Black shell-bursts surrounded them. Fragments tore through the fuel tank with a terrible hiss. One shell exploded directly under the port-side wing, tipping the plane over on its side before sending it into a nosedive. Kennard fought to regain control. Still, they plummeted.

  In the frenzy, Digby was sure his pilot had been hit. He began to climb from his seat to take over the stick. Kennard waved him away. As they fell, more Archie boomed around the plane, followed by cracks of rifle fire from the lines. Then, with a shuddering jolt, they hit the ground. The tail of the plane almost sheared off. They bounced and careened through a field before coming to a halt. Rooted in their seats, Kennard and Digby were both stunned that they had actually survived the crash. In the last moment, Kennard must have righted the plane enough to avoid hitting the ground head-on, but he could not recall how he had done it.

  Kennard had been flying solo for only two dozen hours. Seven months before, he had been living in the Argentine Pampas, working as a hand on a twenty-thousand-acre ranch. It was a long way from his homeland, Kent, England, where he was born into the landed gentry. The Kennards owned a large estate outside Maidstone and produced hops. Caspar spent his early years in the family’s stately home, Frith Hall, then attended Felsted School in Essex, a private boarding school.

  On graduation, he decided against university. With his older brother Keith set to inherit the estate, there was little future for him at Frith Hall. He decided to make his own way in the world and left on a steamer ship for South America. Through his extended family he gained an introduction to J. C. Douglas, the owner of an expansive ranch in Argentina. Soon after, he found himself speaking pidgin Spanish and spending all day in a saddle, herding cattle.