The Cooler King Read online

  THE COOLER KING

  Also by Patrick Bishop

  NON-FICTION

  The Reckoning

  Wings

  Target Tirpitz

  Ground Truth

  Battle of Britain

  3 Para

  Bomber Boys

  Fighter Boys

  The Irish Empire

  The Provisional IRA

  The Winter War

  FICTION

  Follow Me Home

  A Good War

  First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2015 by

  Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Patrick Bishop 2015

  The moral right of Patrick Bishop to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78239-022-0

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-78239-024-4

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78239-025-1

  The publisher and author wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Under the Wire by William Ash with Brendan Foley, published by Bantam Press, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited; A Red Square by William Ash, published by Howard Baker, reprinted by permission of the Estate of William Ash and Brendan Foley; Reach for the Sky by Paul Brickhill, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, reprinted by permission of the author’s estate; Moving Tent by Richard Passmore, extract reprinted with thanks to Thomas Harmsworth Publishing; A Gallant Company by Jonathan F. Vance, published by Pacifica Military History, reprinted by permission of the author. Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

  Text design by Richard Marston

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London WCIN 3Jz

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  To Nina

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Illustrations

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Index

  A Note About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Bill Ash’s widow Ranjana Sidhanta and his friend and collaborator Brendan Foley for generously allowing me to quote from his publications and reproduce photographs from his early years. I am also grateful to Juliet Ash for sharing memories of her father and to Betty Barthropp for talking to me about her late husband Paddy’s friendship with Bill. The staffs of the National Archives, the Imperial War Museum, the London Library and the Bishopsgate Institute were helpful and efficient.

  The work has been made easier and more pleasurable by the professionalism of the Atlantic team, in particular my editor James Nightingale and copyeditor Will Atkins who saved me from many errors.

  I would also indebted to my friend Annabel Merullo for shepherding the project through, from inception to realization.

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  SECTION ONE

  The formal portrait Bill sent home in 1941. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  Bill with his sister Adele at home in Dallas in 1925. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  Bill during training. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  At the controls of his Spitfire in late 1941. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King greets Bill during a visit to 411 Squadron. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  The squadron at Digby.

  At dispersal, waiting for action, Digby, late summer 1941. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  411 pilots just before or after an operation.

  Squadron Leader Stan Turner.

  Bill is entertained by Buck McNair. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  The church at Vieille Église today. (Patrick Bishop)

  The house where the Boulanger family once had their estaminet. (Patrick Bishop)

  The cover of Bill’s prisoner-of-war file at Stalag Luft III. (Courtesy of Brendan Foley)

  Paddy Barthropp.

  Sketch map of Stalag Luft III. (The National Archives)

  SECTION TWO

  Stalag Luft III, c. 1944. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  Watchtower at Stalag Luft III, c. 1942. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  Robert Kee, 1951. (John Chillingworth/Picture Post/Getty Images)

  Wing Commander Harry Day briefs Kenneth Moore for his role as Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky (1955). (Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images)

  Prisoners laying the foundations for a hut in Stalag Luft III. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  Prisoners in a hut in Stalag Luft III, 1943. (Keystone/Getty Images)

  Prisoners and camp staff in the Red Cross parcel store, Stalag Luft III. (© IWM, HU 20926)

  Prisoners prepare a news sheet, Stalag Luft III. (© IWM, HU 20928)

  Prisoners tend their garden at Stalag Luft III. (© IWM, HU 20930)

  A church service for POWs at Stalag Luft III, c. 1944. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  An American military funeral at Stalag Luft III, February 1945. (Topfoto/The Granger Collection, New York)

  The avenue leading away from Stalag Luft III. (© James Finlay, www.jamesfinlay.com)

  Halbau today. (© James Finlay, www.jamesfinlay.com)

  Liberated POWs at Marlag und Milag Nord at Westertimke, 29 April 1945. (© IWM, BU 4835)

  Release of prisoners in Westertimke Camp, 5 May 1945. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

  Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (1963). (© John Springer Collection/Corbis)

  ‘The real escaper is more than a man equipped with compass, maps, papers, disguise and a plan. He has an inner confidence, a serenity of spirit which make him a Pilgrim.’

  Airey Neave, Colditz escaper

  PROLOGUE

  The Spitfire slithered to a halt. For a few seconds he savoured the wonderful silence. He opened his eyes. Framed in the windshield in front of his face was the outline of a church tower. The church seemed to be upside down. He realized that he was hanging, inverted by the straps of his safety harness. He felt for the triangular release catch, pressed, and slumped onto the soft earth. He had jettisoned the perspex canopy just before the landing. It made getting out a lot easier. He could smell petrol and hear the tick of hot aluminium. He knew what was likely to come next: a sickening whoompf and an explosion of flame. He wriggled through the gap between the humped fuselage and the ground, rolled clear and staggered upright. He raised his arms and cautiously clenched and unclenched his hands. Amazingly, he felt OK.

  He looked back at the wreckage of the Spitfire, which lay there like a spent comet, trailing a long tail of churned dirt. A thought floated through his head, something they drummed into him during training: In the case of a crash landing in hostile territory it
is vital to ensure that your aircraft does not fall intact into enemy hands. There was no danger of that. The airframe was bent, the wings were torn from their roots and the propeller blades twisted like wrought iron.

  The sound of an aeroplane engine made him look up. One of the German fighters was circling, checking whether he had survived the crash. He felt the pilot’s eyes locking onto him and looked around frantically for somewhere to hide. Across the field lay the church and a line of houses. The pilot would be radioing back to his base at Saint-Omer, reporting the Spitfire’s last resting place. He set off, jogging across the furrows towards the cover of the village. The heavy clay stuck to his boots, turning his limbs to lead, as if he was running in a nightmare.

  The village had just a single street. The houses either side were low and built of dull red brick with thick wooden shutters framing the windows. It was two o’clock in the afternoon yet nobody was about. The place was as deserted as a ghost town in his native Texas. The German plane had cleared off, its engine note fading to a distant pulse. The silence that followed felt sinister. It was broken by a rusty creaking. The front door of one of the cottages opened. In the doorway stood a little girl, about nine or ten years old, he guessed. She stepped forward, beckoning to him.

  He took a few paces back. It seemed wrong to involve her in his drama. Yet she kept walking towards him, holding out her hand. Instinctively he reached out and took it. She turned round and led him towards the house.

  The door shut behind him. He was in a small, dim room. In the gloom he made out the shape of a woman, youngish and attractive, with a sad, kind face. She smiled and beckoned him to follow her as she climbed the stairs.

  He tried to remember some of the little French he had learned at school and could only come up with ‘bonjour’. He felt a need to talk, to explain who he was, although it must have been obvious, speaking urgently in English, even though it was clear she didn’t understand a word. She pressed a finger to her lips and he got the message and shut up. Then she tugged at his tunic, opened a wardrobe and pulled out a man’s jacket and some trousers – her husband’s? Her brother’s? He stifled the impulse to ask.

  He took off his flying jacket and boots. As he went to pull down his trousers, he saw mother and daughter watching him, and a foolish spurt of modesty made him hesitate. The woman jabbed a finger at the window, motioning for him to hurry before the Germans arrived. He dropped his trousers and pulled on the new pair. They were a bit short but otherwise OK. The little girl clapped. The black jacket was a tight fit but it would have to do. The woman reached again into the wardrobe and bought out a pair of boots and some wooden clogs. He chose the clogs, thinking they would look more authentic. A few seconds later he was regretting it as he clopped unsteadily back down the stairs.

  After the horrors of the last half-hour he felt tears pricking his eyes at such unconditional kindness. He had neither the words nor the time to pour out his thanks. Impulsively he gave the woman a quick, heartfelt hug, and kissed the little girl. They led him to the back door. Behind a small garden lay flat fields. He hurried away with no idea where he was heading. He looked back. The door was already closed, as if his saviours had never existed.

  It was the end of March. The land looked drab and dead. It was flat and watery, criss-crossed by drainage ditches. Between the ridged planes of the fields stood lines of bare poplars, stabbing like rows of spears into the vaulting grey sky.

  To the left of the house was a hedge and behind it a lane ran south of the village. He walked purposefully, not too fast, not too slow, a man with things to do and a home to go to. Over the fields drifted the sound of clashing gears. He looked back. A lorry was driving into the village and behind it a motorcycle with a grey-helmeted rider. The black peasant jacket and the clogs no longer felt like any protection. He had to get out of sight. There was a channel running along the side of the road, a drainage ditch or a narrow canal. He remembered from trips to the movies in Dallas how escapees from chain gangs waded down rivers to throw the bloodhounds off the scent.

  He slithered down the bank. The water was cold and slimy. It stank dreadfully. He was standing waist-deep in the village sewer. He waded southwards, crouching down below the bank until he was out of sight of the houses. When he could stand the stench no more he climbed out and trudged across fields and ditches, avoiding anywhere where he might encounter humans.

  At six o’clock it was getting dark. He was exhausted, hungry, cold and soaking wet. An isolated copse, etched black against the sinking sun, offered a possible sanctuary for the night. He ducked under the bare branches, stretched out on the mulch of dead leaves and closed his eyes. It was Tuesday, 24 March 1942. In the space of a few hours Flying Officer William Ash’s war had changed utterly.

  ONE

  The men’s boots crunched softly on the sandy track. It was a midsummer day in June, 1942 but here, deep in the forest, the air was cool and the sun barely penetrated the pine woods that stretched out into infinity on either side of the path. They rounded a bend and there, rising out of a vast clearing, stood the camp. It was a forlorn sight. Rows of grey-green wooden huts lay in neat lines surrounded by tall barbed-wire fences. Watchtowers had been erected at regular intervals around the perimeter from which guards leaned over their machine guns and looked down impassively at the new arrivals.

  The men halted at the entrance while their escort consulted with the sentries. Then the gates swung open. The men marched through, shoulders back, arms swinging, in an effort to show they were not beaten yet. A depressing rattle of chains and padlocks confirmed the new reality. They had reached the end of their journey into captivity. From now on the boundaries of their lives would extend no further than the wire walls of Stalag Luft III.

  It had taken William Ash more than two months to get there. After crash-landing his Spitfire in a field close to the church in the village of Vieille-Église in the flat lands of the Pas-de-Calais he spent several days wandering the countryside avoiding German patrols before being rescued by a French family who passed him on to a resistance network. He had been taken to Paris where he spent a dreamlike few weeks hiding in the apartment of a young couple. Then one morning he was woken by the sound of the door being kicked in. He was dragged off for interrogation by the Gestapo who, after getting nothing from him, announced their intention to shoot him as a spy. He had resigned himself to death when good luck – a frequent visitor in his short life – intervened. The Luftwaffe somehow learned he was in the hands of the Gestapo. Air force pride demanded the prisoner be handed over to them. The Gestapo reluctantly disgorged him. He spent a brief spell at the Dulag Luft reception centre outside Frankfurt, where all Allied airmen who survived being shot down over German territory were interrogated and processed. And now he was at the end of the line, with every prospect of remaining here until the war was over.

  Inside the gates of Stalag Luft III the new prisoners were counted off before being taken into the administration area for processing. They were watched by a gaggle of prisoners who had come over to the compound fence to look over the latest arrivals. They themselves had only been there a few months at most but already they seemed like old lags. Bill stood chatting with the others while he waited his turn, smelling the clean scent of pine resin mixed with the tobacco smoke. First came registration, which meant being fingerprinted, photographed and issued with an identity disc inscribed with the name of the camp and an identifying number. Then they were all marched into the compound and the Germans melted away. Inside the compound, it looked as if organizational matters were in the hands of the prisoners themselves. An efficient man in RAF uniform told Ash he would be billeted in Block 64 on the northern side of the compound. He was pleased to hear that a friend he had made in Dulag Luft would be sharing the same barrack. He and Patrick Barthropp had first met a few weeks before. Ash’s first impression had not been favourable. Barthropp seemed to be a ‘fighter boy’ from central casting, a ‘young, hard-nosed Spitfire pilot with a devil-may-care attit
ude to life and death and a passion for anything fast, including aeroplanes, horses and women’, he wrote years later in a memoir. There was some truth in the caricature, but he had already come to see that the studied carelessness hid something more complicated and more interesting, and in time would judge him to be ‘one of the kindest, most generous men I have ever met’.1

  On the face of it they were chalk and cheese. Their backgrounds could scarcely have been more different. Bill Ash was twenty-two and had already had enough adventures for several lifetimes. He had grown up in Texas during the Depression, the son of a travelling salesman who, through no fault of his own, never seemed to hang on to a job. Money was always tight, sometimes non-existent. He been forced to work almost as soon as he could walk. He had paid his own way through university only to find it impossible to get a foot on the ladder to a proper career. In the end Hitler had chosen his future for him. Unlike most of his fellow Texans he had followed closely events in Europe and was determined to fight against Fascism as soon as he could. Long before the United States entered the war he headed north to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, renouncing his American citizenship in the process. He was posted to Britain and had been flying Spitfires with 411 Squadron when his career had come to an end, bounced by a swarm of Focke-Wulf 190 fighters when returning from a raid on the town of Comines, on the Franco-Belgian border.

  Paddy Barthropp was twenty-one but his blond hair, slight build and pink cheeks made him look younger. He sprang from the Anglo-Irish gentry, and moved in a world of country houses, shooting parties and horses. He had nonetheless suffered some of life’s knocks. His father had gambled away the family fortune, forcing Paddy to leave his Catholic private school early. The setback had been the making of him. After a brief period as an engineering apprentice he joined the RAF as an officer cadet in 1938 and fought in the Battle of Britain. He had been shot down six weeks after Bill, in the same area of the Pas-de-Calais.

  They approached life from opposite directions. Bill liked classical music and serious literature. Paddy hardly read anything but the racing pages of the papers, and was happy to listen to whatever was playing on the anteroom gramophone. Bill was a committed left-winger. Paddy had no interest in politics. These differences, though, were insignificant compared with the attitudes that bound them together. Among them were a broad streak of irresponsibility, an addiction to romance and a feeling of personal affront at the injustices with which the world abounded. Above all they shared an appreciation of the absurd and a great capacity for fun and laughter. As they stowed away their few possessions in the lockers next to their bunk beds and went out to explore their new domain, it was clear they were going to need their sense of humour to deal with what lay ahead.