The Venlo Incident

by Nigel Jones

  From my observation post at the receiving end I concluded that if we had wished to achieve the biggest possible results from our air offensive, we should have concentrated on making as many small raids as possible, six planes or so, during day and night, dropping not only bombs, but also forged ration cards and propaganda leaflets. It was always easy to tell when either of the latter had been dropped. Normally, an alert lasted only as long as hostile planes were over the city and when, later in 1944, concentrated attacks were made and all bombs were dropped during a period of fifteen minutes or so, the all clear often sounded within half an hour of the alert. Occasionally though it was greatly delayed and as much as two hours passed before it was sounded. Everybody knew what this meant. Ration cards or leaflets had been dropped and the whole life of the city remained at a standstill whilst air wardens, police, and Gestapo sought for and collected them. The Nazis feared nothing so much as that people might hear the truth, and the death penalty was rigorously imposed in cases where people had been guilty of picking up allied leaflets, or of disseminating news heard in B.B.C. broadcasts.

  For me the raids on Berlin were a wonderful spectacle, and I must confess that during 1944 the progress of our air offensive was the most absorbing interest of my life. The German authorities seemed to have come to the conclusion that it was better to give the people the longest possible warning of probable or possible danger from the air instead of subjecting them to the sudden shock of wailing sirens. Early in 1944 a system was started by which telephone subscribers in Berlin, and also in certain other cities, could hear reports broadcast from the local air command post (Gefechtsstand Berlin) by making a connection from a certain point on their telephone receiver to the aerial terminal of their radio set. The results obtained by this system of pre-warning must have been satisfactory, for shortly afterwards these broadcasts could also be heard on any radio set by tuning in the usual Berlin station, which ceased transmitting its normal programme during raids.

  Still later, in the late spring of 1944, a special station started operating, which gave reports of enemy air activity for the whole country. At first the position of raiding planes was indicated by map references which gave a general district indication, and then the exact area by letter groups indicating the north-south and east-west limits; I did not find it at all difficult to plot out the different areas by checking up the code numbers given with the subsequent reports of places raided as reported in the war bulletins, and when later I was given a map on which the references were indicated I found that for the area round Berlin and the northern route from the coast I was only very little out in my estimates. As air activity increased after ‘D’ Day the position of invading planes was broadcast in plain, and one had the most detailed information about all air activity over Germany, including not only reports on large formations engaged on strategic bombing, but also on tactical operations, on the movement of reconnaissance machines, those engaged on mine laying in the North Sea and Baltic, and even of single low-flying fighters engaged in the disturbance of road and rail traffic.

  This news was broadcast throughout the day and as the war in the west developed the frequency with which hostile planes were present increased until there was practically no intermittence. The announcer was generally a girl, and however sensational the news, it came in a monotonous expressionless voice in clipped carefully enunciated phrases. She would tell how the red raiders were on such and such a course, the blue, the green, the yellow, sometimes almost running out of colours to specify fresh invaders, were taking other courses; she would give details of approximate numbers, their height and, every now and again, an urgent warning to some particular town which might possibly be one of the chosen targets. Then there were district warnings of the approach of low-flying fighters, and speculations about the purpose of small groups or single planes; whether they were bombers or reconnaissance machines. It was fascinating to follow all these movements on my map and to mark the positions of the various groups with counters, and to note the often devious routes by which targets were approached. In the winter of 1944-5 planes which appeared to threaten some town like Magdeburg or Leipzig would suddenly make an unexpected swerve and almost before the alert could be sounded bombs would be falling on Berlin.

  Then we had the cuckoo. Tired of listening to everlasting air raid reports I would turn on Berlin or the Deutschland station to listen to a concert; suddenly the music would be broken off, interrupted by a noisy and extremely agitated cuckoo repeating his call without stop for about a minute. Then the station would go dead and one knew that one was in for something really big. There would be the usual sound of running feet in the building and the camp outside, followed by an unearthly hush broken only by the sirens sounding the full alarm, and shortly afterwards the noise of the approaching planes to the accompanyment of flak which, as 1944 drew to its close, grew less and less until it practically ceased. I stood on my bed, my guard next to me on a stool, prepared to follow every detail of the impending attack.

  On one such occasion, on 22nd March, 1944, I was standing at my window watching a big daylight raid on Berlin. I heard the sound of a returning bomber which seemed to be in difficulties and losing height. Suddenly there was a loud plop and the barrack opposite me on the other side of the wall seemed to erupt flame like a volcano. Then followed the sound of bombs rushing down on to us and several other plops. I smelt burning wool and, looking down, I saw spots of flame on my bed caused by drops of phosphorus which had splashed in through the window. I bundled the blanket up and shoved it in my pail, and then went to the door to see what was happening, for I could hear a lot of shouting and people rushing about. It seemed that a bomber carrying phosphorus incendiaries had been badly hit and, before trying to make a forced landing, had jettisoned its load of bombs and no less than seven fell in our garden, of which two neatly straddled my cell falling twelve yards in front of it and about the same distance behind.

  After this exciting event there was a sudden rise in British stock; “You don’t know what may happen with these damned Yankees. What do they know about geography? Why, they may mistake us for the Heinckel works next time and unload all their bombs on us.” The warders became very martial and all guards off duty were ordered to report back at the building immediately an alert was sounded. Then a large gang of prisoners invaded the garden and dug an enormous hole which swallowed up one of my most cherished flower beds. In this a shelter was built of prefabricated hollow ‘L’-shaped concrete blocks which interlocked in such a way that no mortar or cementing was required. It was said that shelters built in this way had proved better than more solid structures as they were resilient and could give better to the shock of explosions. I was extremely annoyed at the result of this work, for one day there was a high wind which laid sand inches thick on all parts of my garden. When the shelter was completed I was informed I must go to earth there whenever the alert sounded, and until the all clear, might not even show my nose above ground. It was a beastly dark, dank place, which I promptly christened the mass grave of Katyn. I went there both for day and night raids at first but stood on the steps leading to the entrance so that I could watch what was going on, and only took cover when there was a heavy fall of flak splinters from directly overhead.

  I soon gave up going there for night raids as I got a better view from my window, but I maintained the theory that I did so during daylight raids as otherwise I might have been surprised in my cell by the commandant, and in any case, the progress of these raids could be followed much better from outside. For sheer beauty it would be difficult to beat the sight offered by one of the big American raids of some thousand machines on a fine summer day. The planes flew at great heights and looked like tiny silver fish each followed by a gleaming wake of foam. They kept perfect formation and moved in great curves leaving the sky patterned by the fine network of their exhausts. Over Berlin smoke flares had been dropped, which formed gigantic figures reminiscent of the symbols used on flags and badges to denote the S
S. When the bomb carpets were laid one felt rather than heard them by a curious tremor of the ground under one’s feet. Then over Berlin a black cloud would form compounded of smoke from the flak bursts and that from fires on the ground; slowly it would grow and gather denseness until nothing would remain of our fine summer’s day which, more often than not, ended in rain.

  Through my visits to the shelter I got to know the Bears by sight as they also took cover there. They were always there when I arrived and, as it was very dark and they never came outside, I was unable to distinguish more than that they were three smallish men; more interesting was the fact that some six to eight SS men also came to the shelter, and through them I discovered the existence of a small military prisoner of war camp within the walls of the concentration camp, in which some British officers were imprisoned. These SS men were normally on guard duty at this camp but, during raids, all those who were off duty at the time had to come to the Bunker to reinforce our own warders. They were a very decent lot of fellows, and as they saw that I was on most intimate terms with my guards and seemed to know a lot about what was going on, they soon got used to my presence and talked quite freely. It was in this way that I learnt of an attempt to escape made towards the end of September by a number of prisoners, some of whom were British. I was to meet most of them later and learnt then that the party consisted of Wing Commander (‘Wings’) Day, Lieutenant Colonel Churchill, Major Dodge, Flight Lieutenants James and Dowse, and four British N.C.O.s and men; also with them were five Russian officers and the Italian naval, military, and air attachés from the Berlin Embassy.

  When I heard about the affair it was said that all the men had been recaptured within twenty-four hours, and that most of them had been brought to the Bunker, but I subsequently learnt that this was not quite correct, for one officer, Major Johnny Dodge, D.S.C., D.S.O., M.C., succeeded in escaping capture for about a month, having managed to reach some French slave workers who had concealed him. Without money or food and knowing no German it was impossible for him to get very far afield, and in the end he was discovered by a search party and brought back to spend the rest of his imprisonment in our Bunker. Dodge, Wings Day, Jim my James, and Sydney Dowse were specialists in escaping, and no camp had yet been found strong enough to hold them. They had all taken part in the famous mass escape from Stalag Luft III when fifty of their comrades were murdered after their recapture on orders from Hitler. Undaunted by this evidence of the risk that they ran, no sooner had they arrived at the special camp at Sachsenhausen than they started preparations for a fresh escape and, in spite of insuperable difficulties, tunnelled their way out. To me it is a great consolation and a vindication of my having stayed ‘put’ for so many years that, when these doughties were at last imprisoned in the Bunker, they found themselves in a cage proof against even their superlative ingenuity.

  On the 6th November, 1944, while I was working in the garden I heard someone in cell No. 67 whistle the ‘British Grenadiers’—funny how every Englishman at once thinks of this tune if he wants to make his nationality known. One of the warders happened to be in the garden that day and, as he was standing not far from me, I could not make any response at the moment. Next day though as I passed the window I whistled the same tune which was immediately taken up from the cell. I could not loiter there for long as I had been working on a bed at the other side of the garden, but as it was not far from where I kept my garden tools I managed to pass near the window once or twice more. On the first occasion I pretended to be singing and said: “My name is Best, sixty years old, five years here, and still going strong.” When I next passed I could see a vague figure through the ground glass screen of window and a voice said: “I am Flight Lieutenant Sidney Dowse, R.A.F., and there are a lot of us here. We escaped. You are Best, I know all about you, but there were two of you, what happened to the other?” “Stevens,” I said, “he’s at Dachau, been there three years.” “Oh, so he wasn’t shot. We had heard that he was dead.” “Oh no, the last I heard he was alive and kicking.” I warned him to be careful and not to get caught talking to me through his window as I knew that there was a most untrustworthy fellow in the next cell. We wished each other luck and arranged to try to have another chat next day, but when I then whistled the ‘British Grenadiers’ there was no response, and I later found out that he and all the other British prisoners had been moved to cells in Wing ‘A’.

  After this I tried hard to make contact with some of them but my guards had been specially warned to keep us apart and as, if I had succeeded in inducing them to help me, I should have been risking their lives I did not feel justified in trying. I had about thirty English books which had come with my gear from Holland and, as I knew that there were none in the library, I handed over the whole lot to Eccarius and asked him to lend them to any British prisoners who might be in the camp. I had carefully erased my name from all of them and although Eccarius hummed and hawed a good deal, in the end he agreed to do what I asked, and I later heard that he had been as good as his word. Really, I grew to be quite fond of Eccarius. True, he was a weak drunken fellow, a coward, and a lickspittle, but there was something good-natured and kindly about him, and after the five years we had been together there was little with which I could reproach him, and in many ways he showed genuine affection for me; whenever he brought me a letter from May, or had any other news for me that was good, his face used to light up in a way which showed that he shared my pleasure.

  The knowledge that there were other Englishmen in the building obsessed all my thoughts, and the fact that I could not meet them made me realize how intensely lonely I was, and how much I longed for a chance to speak freely to someone who felt and thought as I did. Later I heard that they too had tried to reach me through the little barber, Max. Unfortunately, whenever I went to him one of my guards was always with me, and he, of course, was far too much afraid of their uniform to dare to say anything compromising in their presence; they in turn were afraid of him, for he was a great favourite of the warders, and they could not be sure of his discretion. There was only one thing which I could do to help my fellow countrymen. I learned that they were being docked of their exercise, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, because Eccarius had no one available to guard them. I therefore suggested to him, after first having obtained their consent, that my guards might help him out when they were off duty and to this he agreed. Later, as this became too much of a tie for my men, I arranged that Karl Böning should be transferred to this duty and that my remaining three guards would manage without him.

  At this time all short leave had been suspended and my Berliners could no longer go home on their off days; it was therefore no great sacrifice to them to increase the number of hours which they spent in my cell where, I am sure, they found life almost pleasanter than elsewhere. Karl Boning was a good-natured fellow and I knew that I could rely upon him to interfere with his charges as little as possible, and he would certainly never have given them away if they committed any small breach of regulations.

  It was about this time that I had a talk with Eccarius which amused me very much, and which I think is typical of the German attitude towards obedience to orders. The papers had been full of threats of severe penalties to be imposed on any Germans who assisted escaping prisoners of war, and Hitler’s general attitude towards allied prisoners of war was one of ‘Hang the lot’. So I asked Eccarius one day what he would do if he were given orders to shoot me.

  “I would have to shoot you, of course.”

  “I don’t see any ‘of course’ about it, we have always been very good friends, and I think that it would be a very dirty action if you were to shoot me.”

  “Of course, Herr Best, I should hate doing so, and should never be easy in my mind again, but if it were an order and I disobeyed, I would be shot myself.”

  “But, my dear friend, you are a brave fellow I know, surely you would not do something which you knew was wrong, simply to save your own life.”

  “Ach, Herr Be
st, it isn’t that at all. You don’t understand. If I were shot for disobeying an order I should be disgraced, while if I shot you, you would die a hero’s death.”

  I am thankful that the occasion never arose, for I am sure that he would have been so nervous that he would have made an awful mess of the job. To me the principle of punishing Germans in subordinate positions for acts committed under order has always seemed to me unjustified. For generations the idea has been drilled into them that obedience is the most sacred virtue and that orders given by a superior demand unquestioning obedience. E ven with us, I can hardly imagine that personal responsibility would be imposed, and punishment enacted, on any soldier who performed an illegal action on direct orders from a superior. If, in fact, Eccarius had received orders to shoot me, or to subject me to ill-treatment, I am sure that he would have hated doing so, and for my part I should certainly not have borne him malice. My own experience during all the years of my imprisonment was that the vast majority of men whose duty brought them in close contact with prisoners had no inclination to treat them cruelly, but on the contrary sympathized with them and did what they could to help them; rough manners were frequently merely a façade which concealed reluctance to perform duties which the man could not avoid.

  When I first came to Sachsenhausen the general tone there was very rough and all the warders spoke to prisoners as though they were animals, giving them brief orders in a harsh voice. For my part, I never reacted to this lack of manners except by an almost exaggerated courtesy. I always said good morning and good night, and thanked the warders when they told me that I could go for exercise, when they brought my meals, and even when they chained me for the night. At first they looked at me as though I were crazy, but one day the plug-ugly Drexl replied rather shyly to my good night with “A pleasant rest”, and this became a sort of personal contact between us, which developed to the point that he would come in for a chat in the evening. Then Eccarius joined in with a response to my morning and evening wishes and started saying please, and asking me whether I would do this or that instead of giving me a curt order.