THRILLING ESCAPES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 638, 16 September 1933, Page 3

THRILLING ESCAPES

WAR EPISODES ATTEMPTS MADE IN A REFUSE CART AND A COFFIN. INFINITE PATIENCE NECESSARY The prisoner of war who would make a successful bid for freedom must possess not only stamina and courage, bnt ingenuity and infinite patience 'as well. He has three problems to tackle; breaking prison, rtaching (the frontier, and crossing it; and, of these, the first certainly calls for the most resource and probably involves the greatest danger. Weeks' must be saerificed to careful preparation, for supplies must be obtained hidden, and the necessary tools, disguise, and kit fashioned, from the poorest material under the nose of his captors. Not least to be fearcd is the well-meant interest of friends. One prisoner got out of camp in !a, laundry basket; another was wheeled put in a refuse cart, concealed be.neath empty tins and garbage; a third 'crawled 200 yards through the camp sewer, three foot in diameter; 'while one Russian was substituted in a coffin for the corpse of a seniod officer being sent to his native country for burial. One British officer conceived the idea of disguising himself as a German N.C.O. and marching out :a. party of his friends dressed as soldiers on fatigue duty. Not only had the uniforms to be made, but a pass had to be forged and a bayonet provided; the latter he made from wood, and gilded the requisite parts with gold foil for cigarette ends. The party rrrarched out without rousing the sentry's suspicions, but ran into a German who recognised one of them. They scattered and fled, but only one reached Holland. What must a m'an's feelings be at the actual moment of escape? In "Escape Fever," Captain Geoffrey Harding, who was the fifteenth of the thirty British officers to escape from Germany into Holland during the w:a,r, gives a vivid description. His aeroplane having been brought down in flames in enemy lines on the opening day of the Somme battle in 1916, Harding was sent to the reprisals camp at Strohen, in Hanover, where he and !a comrade set about diggingj- a tunnel with a table knife. After weeks of labour the tunnel collapsed. They then decided to mach out of camp in the guise of orderlies fetching water. Armed with a compass made from a razor blade, a map drawn in gelatine (which could be swallowed in case of emergency), wire-cutters made from the crosspieces of an iron bedstead, boot-black-ing as a smokeless fuel for cooking, pepper to put dogs off the scent along 'their tracks, and sand to throw in the eyes of pursuers, they donned their disguise and waited for the fateful moment. • At last we were sauritering toward the outer gates. To add the right touch we unfastened our jackets, lighted cigarettes, and started &.n argument. We were now acting for our lives. We had about thirty yards to cover — the longest I have ever known. . . . The sentry was watching us from the other side of the wire. He made no sign. We were now within five yards of the gate land it was time to recite our final lines, which spelt either freedom or recapture and solitary confinement. "Postern! Wasser!" we shoutcd in the aecepted way. Anxiety deducted five years from our lives before our man dropped his gaze from us and slowly opened 'the gate. Marching by night and hiding by day, they reached the Ems. By cutting a pack of cards, they decided who should swim the river first. The effort was almost more than they could manage. On the seventh night of their escape they inquired lat a cottage whether they were still in Germany. They were. Shaking off the hue and cry, they staggered across the frontier into the arms of the Dutch guards. Sad to4 relate, the author's partner in this action was killed in action shortly afterwards. Captain H. A. Cartwright's accou'nt of the attempt made by himself and Major Harrison in the guise of German officers is fanother interesting story. The necessary uniform, caps, swords, and badges had been con"cocted with such success that the ..sentry passed them through the gate without suspicion, though some delay and their inability to speak Germ'an caused them much trepidation. Nine nights later 'they reached the Baltie coast and were aetually boardihg a Danish' steamer when a policedog raised the alarm. ' Major Harrison must surely be one of the most intrepid escapers of all time. Undaunted by this setback, he broke out of Magdeburg civil_ prison, where he was undergoing punishment for his previous attempt, and was within reach of the Dutch frontier when. again recaptured. On this occasion the coat which had previously disguised him as a German officer had been reeut and dyed in potassium per

manganate to clothe him as ia "smart" civilian. This same coat, shortened and made shabby, enabled him to make his third and successful attempt as a "labourer." The bath-house at Strohen Camp was outside the wire fence, and Harrison hid beneath its floor until after dark, when he marched away and crossed( the frontier in safety. Strohen was the scene of many ingenious escape s. There was, however, insufficient ingenuity displayed in the attempt to smash a way through to freedom by means of a battering-ram made from an iron bar. The story is told by Captain Grin-nell-Milne, whose allotted task was to open the door of the inner fence in order to clear the way for the assault upon the outer gate. Having performed his part, he whistled for the charging-party to start — "I couldn't see much in the dark, but I heard ia scuffling sound as they got under way; and a second later they came thundering past. I have a recollection of feeling exactly like an old man at ia level-crossing holding open the gates for an express to go - by;' and the next moment the express - was derailed and I was left looking' stupidly at 'the accident. "There was a tremendous crash as the front man of the party hit the gate. In the darkness he had missed the lock with the end of the ram and it was his face which charged the framework. But in spite of the five strong men behind him, his fiace wasn't hard enough to push down the obstruetion,„ and he let forth a yell that must have curdled the blood of all the sentries around the camp." The most stirring epic is that of the " tunnel at Holzmiden camp, sixty yards long" land eighteen inches in diameter, which took over nine months •to complete, and was dug uiider the nose of a eommandant who boasted that he had made the camp escapeproof. The chosen starting-point for the .tunnel was beneath a staircase in a part of the camp to which access was forbidden to officers. Consequently each working party had to pass to and fr0 in disguise day after day, a fea.t requiring most skilful organisation. Each shift consisted of three men, The first lay on his stomach at the tunnel face, working with a cold chisel by candle-light, placing the stones and earth into a basin which was pulled away by his mate on a rope and handed oveij to the third man to dispose of its contents. Home-made bellows and an improvised pipe kept air circulating in the tunnel. At 10.15 p.m. on a rainy July night the final act was staged and the hrst man cut his way out with a bread knife into a field of beans. The story is told by Lieut. Hugh Durnford, who was in charge of the depaxture arrangements. "All the escapers were lying dressed on their beds, and I summoned each as his turn came, and sent him through the orderlies' quarters, when he was taken in tow and escorted to the tunnel mouth. All went well until at two o'clock there was a reported hold-up. At four o'clock someone went through on his own and found the tunnel to be empty; during this time traffic had stopped. Now the stream got going again and 29 men had aetually got out when the tunnel caved in beyond reparation. There were three or four officers in the tunnel at the time, and though the first man knew he couldn't get on the others didn't know. Back they all had to be pulled by the legs, packs and all. One very stronjg officer whose » turn hadn't yet come and who was j quite fresh offered to do all the re-. trieving work; and' he did it, but it took him a long time. Ten of the 29 aetually reached Holland."