The Grand Escape

by Neal Bascomb

  After a dismal breakfast in the mess hall, Gray and Helder took off in their trusted Farman Experimental FE2b. Helder 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 tail wing, and 160-horsepower engine, had served them well on numerous missions. It carried colored streamers on the tail wing to mark it as the escort leader. Minutes after clearing the aerodrome, the engine started 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 left 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. Gray and Helder circled at 10,000 feet, waiting for the arrival of the bombers. They could see the white cliffs of Dover in the distance, on the other side of the English Channel. Although it was wonderful to see their homeland, the clear skies guaranteed attack from German fighters—and the lack of clouds meant there would be no place to hide.

  Helder sighted the dozen bombers from the 16th Squadron to the north: slow but sturdy BE2cs carrying 20-pound and 112-pound “eggs” under their carriages. Gray waggled his wings, indicating to the other escort pilots to tighten into a diamond formation. A red flare from the lead bomber signaled the mission was a go. With Marcoing only 35 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 than bursts of Archie surrounded them. All the planes sailed unharmed through the barrage. Perhaps fortune was shining on them and the run would come off without interference. Shortly after, they spotted the sun’s reflection shining from the railway track that ran to Marcoing.

  An FE2b bomber and reconnaissance plane in the air during a run.

  The bombers were below them, at 6,000 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 another over Marcoing. Explosions rocked the air and sent up mushroom clouds of black smoke. Job well done by all, the 16th turned back toward the west. Gray and the other escorts turned to follow the bombers home.

  Suddenly, the sky was alive with black-crossed planes swooping in from the blind of the sun. “Fritz!” Helder screamed through the rush of air. Böelcke and his Jagdstaffel drove home their surprise attack. One British bomber was ripped to pieces. Gray banked, then dove to protect the others. Watching the German planes for any change in their direction, he gauged his angle of descent to maximize his plane’s arc of fire. Knees braced against the sides of the cockpit, Helder stood on his seat to better direct the Lewis gun. Its bullets cut through the air. An Albatros exploded into a ball of flame. Gray’s and Helder’s quick and courageous actions gave the rest of the bombers the seconds they needed to escape to the west.

  The scarlet-and-black planes cartwheeled around to focus on the six escort fighters. They swarmed the British with the bewildering force and speed that would earn them their 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. Helder hung on to a strut to avoid being flung out. Böelcke hounded them as Gray tried to recover. Bullets punctured the petrol tank and shredded a wing. Then the German 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.

  A dogfight on the Western Front. A British plane flies toward a falling German plane, trailing smoke on the right.

  Ground approaching, the world a dizzying swirl of sky and black smoke, Gray fought 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. They spiraled toward the ground as petrol sprayed from the punctured tank. 1,000 feet … 500 feet … With a sudden calm, the plane stopped its corkscrew, and they leveled out. Gray tried 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. His face lacerated with cuts, his arm broken, he crawled out of the plane. Helder also survived the crash. Quickly, a match was struck and touched to the wreckage. Already soaked with petrol, it burst up in flames.

  Soldiers encircled the British airmen a safe distance from the blaze. A gray-haired officer approached, his Luger pistol pointed at their heads. “You are my prisoners, gentlemen,” he said, in clipped English. Gray and Helder raised their arms as their plane disassembled behind them. 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, 500 yards from where Gray and Helder stood. They could do nothing. Their German captor stood there, his pistol trained on them, as if confused about 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 that he did not much care about the danger his words might put him in.

  Gray was quiet for the short ride to Cambrai. For a man like him, capture was a black mark of shame akin to desertion or a self-inflicted wound. He had no choice except to surrender, but that did not lessen the blow. At Cambrai, a medic set his 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 Blain six weeks prior, before he was sent to the camp at Gütersloh. “The war is over for you,” one said in English. Other soldiers spoke to them in German, but not once did Gray reveal that he understood them. He knew that his fluency would be an advantage only if it remained hidden. The soldiers put them 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, two 11th Squadron officers who had not returned from their mission the day before. At least they were alive.

  The following morning, waking up on a straw mattress, Gray found lice inside his shirt. Such a fastidious man, the discovery disgusted him. Later, several Jagdstaffel officers visited the British crews to gloat. Their blue-gray dress uniforms were a stark contrast to the British airmen’s soiled, bloodied outfits, darkening the mood in the cell further. This was nothing compared to their despair when more RFC crews arrived, having been shot down by the Jagdstaffel.

  On September 26, Gray and the others were marched out of Cambrai and boarded onto a third-class train carriage. They stopped in Douai, Valenciennes, Brussels, and Liège on their way to Germany. The battered ruins afforded them a close look at the effects of war. Everything was shrouded in a veil of gloom, the streets crowded with pale-faced widows dressed in black. At Aachen, they knew they were across the German border at last. In Cologne, they were allowed to disembark, and they sat for hours in an underground waiting room while German civilians eyed them like a horrible disease.

  Caspar Kennard’s first flight in France, on October 9, 1916, was only meant to be a short one. He wanted to feel out his BE2c reconnaissance plane and to get his bearings around Saint-Omer. Air mechanic Ben Digby, whose oil-smeared face looked barely old enough to manage a beard, came with him as observer—and as his guide, since he knew the area well. Minutes after takeoff, they were already in trouble. Headed southeastward, engine rattling, Kennard could not coax the plane to climb higher than 2,000 feet. Digby turned around in the forward cockpit and signaled that they needed to circle back. They were crossing over the trenches at an altitude that put them in range of small-arms fire.

  A
s 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 trenches, low enough to see individual German soldiers. There was no escape. Black shell bursts surrounded them. With a terrible hiss, fragments tore through the fuel tank. 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. 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, dazed, neither Kennard nor Digby understood how they had 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.

  World War I fighter planes in flight. The illustration is titled “The Last Loop” and the caption helpfully advises against any unnecessary “stunting” after defeating a German plane.

  He had only been flying solo for two dozen hours. Seven months before, Kennard had been living in the Argentine Pampas, working as a hand on a 20,000-acre ranch. It was a far cry from his homeland, Kent, England, where his father owned a large estate. Caspar spent his early years in the family’s stately home, Frith Hall, outside Maidstone, and then attended Felsted School in Essex, a private boarding school. With his older brother, Keith, set to inherit the family estate, he decided to make his own way in the world and left on a steamer ship for South America. By April 1916, with newspaper accounts and letters from home chronicling the German advances at Verdun, Kennard could no longer remain on the sidelines. He returned to England and joined the RFC. Twenty-five years old, tall and big-boned, he looked like he could wrestle a steer to the ground. He had a bushy mustache and dark slicked-back hair and kept a carved wooden pipe stuck between his teeth. After earning his wings, he served in a reserve squadron before being sent to Saint-Omer. He had been there less than a week when he was shot down.

  A company of German soldiers surrounded Kennard and Digby before they could climb out of the plane, and took them to a holding camp—“Somewhere behind the German lines,” Kennard wrote to his parents, three days later. Although “lucky to be alive,” he described being consumed by disappointment. “You can imagine how we feel. It was my first flight to the lines, and to have to come down without ever having had a decent scrap of it.” Days later, their captors took Digby to a camp for common soldiers and sent Kennard to an officers’ camp at Gütersloh. He did not remain there for long. Hungry for more than bitter soup, bristling against his imprisonment, and desperate to be back in a fight he had only just joined, Kennard decided to attempt escape. When the guard making the lunch rounds came to his cell, Kennard hurled him against the wall, sprinted through the door, and turned the key, locking the guard in. He found himself alone in the hallway, with no plans for where to go next. If he stepped out of the building and tried to make a run for the gate in broad daylight, guards would shoot him. If he hid out until dark, he would be found missing at roll call and a search would ensue. Resigned to his mistake, he sat down and waited to be discovered.

  Caspar Kennard.

  The consequence was that the Germans delivered him straightaway to another camp, Osnabrück, where the commandant, a man called Blankenstein, had him thrown in a solitary cell, giving no indication when—or if—he would be allowed to join the general barracks. Kennard was beginning to understand that the Germans had no intention of abiding by the rules of war that should have determined his treatment. By the time he emerged from isolation, he had decided that a successful escape was his best shot of survival.

  When he was led into the gravel yard for his first evening roll call, he noticed that the few straggly trees around the yard’s edge looked as haunted and stark as his 28 fellow airmen who now stood, with 200 Russians and 90 French, in the cold dusk chill. Among them were Captain Gray and Second Lieutenant Blain.

  A telegram to Kennard’s family informing them he’s missing.

  Commandant Blankenstein arrived, and one of his lieutenants shouted out the roll call. Kennard answered his name when called. Otherwise he stayed apart from the other airmen, his unlit pipe stuck firmly between his lips. Once all the prisoners were accounted for, Blankenstein stepped forward and singled Kennard out in the line. Any further attempts at escape, he warned, would bring the harshest of punishments. Then he dismissed them. A guard brought Kennard to a second-floor room, where seven of his countrymen were already installed. There were beds for each of them, two chairs, a single table, and a stove—but no supply of coal.

  At first, Kennard kept to himself, preoccupied with brooding over his capture and scouring Osnabrück for a means of escape. Beyond the schedule of roll calls and meals, there was little else to do. Some of the British made friends with their fellow Russian and French officers and started language lessons. Others organized boxing and wrestling matches in the small yard. They were allowed to send two letters (of four pages maximum) and four postcards each month, so their letters home were usually written in minute script, using every inch of space. Most included requests for food, clothing, money, books, and a host of other items. The British Red Cross helped facilitate these deliveries and also sent parcels of food to British captives every two weeks. The German high command was more than happy to allow its enemy to sustain its imprisoned troops. Osnabrück also ran a brisk business out of its canteen that supplemented the meager, often putrid, meals served by the Germans. Prisoners paid for items with Lagergeld, specially issued camp money funded either from their military pay in captivity (per an agreement between the British and German governments) or through transfers from their own banks in England.

  In early November, Kennard discovered a window with a missing latch at the end of the second-floor hallway. The window faced a 12-foot-high wall topped with barbwire. A plan fell into place.

  Kennard would drop out of the window at night, cut through the fence that surrounded the barracks, get to the 12-foot wall, and climb over it onto the street below. From Osnabrück, he would take a train to a town close to the Dutch border, some 70 miles away. Once in neutral Netherlands, he would be free to return to England and to the fight. But first, he would need to learn a few words of German.

  Everyone at Osnabrück knew that Captain Gray spoke German flawlessly, despite his efforts to hide it. Kennard went straight to his room and asked to be taught how to buy a train ticket in German. Gray was reluctant, especially when Kennard refused to say what preparations, if any, he had made for an escape attempt. Disciplined and uncompromising, Gray was not one to involve himself in any foolhardy ideas. Kennard revealed his plan. It was probably the most he had spoken in weeks.

  Gray thought the plan had promise but suggested there was no way a few phrases in German would be enough to secure a railway ticket. Kennard would have a better chance getting to the border on foot. For that he would need a compass, food, and a map—and it would be best if he had help. With a couple men, he could gather the essentials more quickly. Together they could watch out for one another on the breakout night. Together they could support each other on the journey to the Netherlands. To round out the group, Gray recommended a third man join them. An officer called Cecil Blain had also come to him for some tutoring in German, and he had guts to spare. Before Kennard could ask, he had a breakout team. For the first time since his capture, he felt his dark mood lift.

  The three men started with milk. Every school child knew that it could be used as invisible ink. Dip a fountain pen in milk, scrawl a message on a blank sheet of paper, write a
note on top of that in ink, then send. The recipient runs a hot iron over the paper, and the fat in the milk below burns, revealing the hidden words—message delivered.

  On the inside of an envelope addressed to his mother, Blain wrote in milk that he needed a compass smuggled in. He also wanted some warm clothes, but these could come in an ordinary package. So she would know to find a hidden message in the envelope, he put a simple code in his letter. “My dearest Mother, I am so sorry I am unable to account for the los of my letter home to you but I hop that this one will rive soon telling you that I am very fit and well. I ccannot tell you how I long to get ome again.” With the additional and missing letters, the code spelled out: “Search.” Gray and Kennard prepared similar messages. “Will they twig it?” Blain wondered. Even if his letter cleared the censors, he feared that his mother might not decipher the code.

  While they waited, the three men acted like they were settling into Osnabrück for the long haul. They made friends with some Russian officers. At night they would have tea together and listen to concerts given by balalaika and guitar players. They even participated in a theater show with some fellow RFC pilots, twisting themselves together and acting the part of an automobile racing across the stage. The assembled men roared with laughter.