The Cooler King Read online

  Stalag Luft III was only a few months old. Its name was an abbreviation of Stammlager Luft – aircrew camp – and it had been built to accommodate the increasing number of fliers being shot down as the Royal Air Force stepped up its campaigns. The air war had moved on. While fighter squadrons still mounted aggressive operations across the Channel to harass the Germans wherever they could reach them, much of the effort was now in the hands of Bomber Command, which launched raids almost nightly on targets inside Germany. From now on American bomber fleets would become increasingly involved in the campaign.

  The first airmen prisoners had been housed in Stalag Luft I at Barth, on a lagoon on the Baltic Sea in north-eastern Germany. When that became too small the inmates were dispersed around other sites. Now all aircrew were to be concentrated in a single camp again – one that was designed to be as difficult to escape from as possible.

  The Germans knew from their experience of captured British aviators in the First World War that air force prisoners were troublesome. A number had refused to opt for a quiet life and set about planning escapes, some ingenious, some foolhardy. The prisoners at Barth had continued the tradition. Stalag Luft III was therefore sited as far from a friendly frontier as geography allowed. It lay near the town of Sagan, on the old frontier with Poland, about ninety miles south-east of Berlin. The Baltic Sea, from where an escaper stood a chance of finding a ship to take him to neutral Sweden, was two hundred miles to the north and Switzerland was more than five hundred miles to the south-west. In between stretched vast areas of territory, controlled and surveilled with all the efficiency that the Nazi state could muster.

  From the outset, the Germans emphasized the futility of trying to break out. ‘The camp staff… hammered into us that Sagan was so remotely sited that even if we did escape there was nowhere to go,’ remembered Wing Commander Henry Lamond, who arrived there from Barth in March 1942.2 ‘Therefore there was no point in escaping and we might as well think of something else to do with our time.’ Lamond was inclined to agree. ‘After we were moved into it and had studied the general layout the general opinion was that they had got it right and this place would be very hard to escape from.’

  Nonetheless the very look of the place was enough to make you want to try. ‘If any spur had been needed to induce prisoners to escape from the compounds at Sagan, the bleakness of the surroundings would have provided it,’ wrote Aidan Crawley, another early arrival. ‘The areas inside the barbed wire were covered with tree stumps and were without a blade of grass. And the soil, which was mainly pine needles on top and sand underneath, crumbled into dust in summer and in winter became mud. Outside the wire a monotonous and unbroken vista of fir trees was all that the prisoners could see.’3

  In June 1942, the camp had two compounds, though more would be added in the coming years as the influx of prisoners forced repeated expansions. Central Compound was reserved for non-commissioned ranks – the sergeants who flew as pilots, navigators, bomb-aimers, wireless-operators and aerial gunners, but who, according to the class-conscious criteria of the RAF, did not qualify as officer material. In the mid summer of 1942, only a handful of NCOs had arrived and Central Compound was practically empty.

  East Compound, though, was filling up rapidly and by the end of the year would house seven hundred prisoners.4 At this early stage it comprised eight single-storey barrack huts, a cookhouse, a bathhouse and two latrine blocks, laid out in rows. The huts were built out of pine boards planed from trees felled in the surrounding forest, stained grey-green or pale brown by wood preservative, with pitched, tar-paper-covered roofs. They were mounted on blocks about a foot off the ground. In the middle of the compound was a concrete-lined pool from which water could be pumped in the not unlikely event of a fire. An open space in the south-east corner was set aside for sports.

  Each hut had twelve large rooms holding eight to ten prisoners, who slept in bunk beds. Three small rooms served as kitchen, bathroom and night urinal. A large window in each room let in some light. For heating there was a single pot-bellied stove which, though adequate for much of the year, made little impression on the cold of a Central German winter, and there were never enough of the coal briquettes which served as fuel.

  Prisoners bathed, shaved, and did their laundry in the compound washroom, fitted with cold-water taps, wooden benches and tin basins. The two latrine blocks consisted of twenty holes cut in planks suspended over a cesspit that was emptied according to a haphazard schedule. In high summer the stench was almost unbearable. To make matters worse the cesspit was home to millions of flies which would take off from time to time to patrol the camp in search of other sustenance. An American officer arriving in August 1942 reported that when the prisoners sat down to eat they first had to conduct a ‘fly purge’ by opening the window, closing the doors, then standing shoulder to shoulder and flailing bath towels to drive the flies out of the window before slamming it shut again.5 Unsurprisingly, the camp was plagued with dysentery.

  East Compound was bounded on its northern side by a long oblong enclosure, the Vorlager or camp annexe. In the top left-hand corner stood a cement blockhouse housing both the shower area and the punishment cells. Next to it was the sick quarters and next to that the coal store. Standing at right angles were four more buildings. The first was a barrack for the Russian prisoners, who were used as slave labour. To the right was the Red Cross parcel store, adjoined by the office where books and mail were censored. Last in line was a dental surgery and more accommodation for the Russians. Running down the west side of both enclosures was the Kommandantur, containing the German administrative headquarters and the staff living quarters.

  The camp was surrounded by two concentric perimeter fences, seven feet apart. Each fence was nine feet high, constructed from strands of barbed wire stretched across concrete stanchions which curved in at the top. The ground in between was littered with drifts of coiled barbed wire. Every hundred yards or so the barbed wire was surmounted by wooden towers, mounted on stilts and equipped with machine guns. They were manned by guards – ‘goons’, in camp slang – who worked brief two-hour shifts to ensure maximum alertness. The towers were known to the prisoners as ‘goon boxes’.

  The most daunting barrier was the least impressive. A warning fence, consisting of a wooden rail two feet high, was situated fifteen yards inside the perimeter fence, in full view of the goon boxes. Almost the first thing newcomers learned were the rules concerning the warning fence. ‘The area between this and the perimeter fence was “no man’s land”,’ according to the official camp history, based on the inmates’ testimony recorded after the war.6 ‘Prisoners of war were forbidden to cross the fence or even to touch it and were shot at if they did so.’ If a ball from the games field landed behind the fence, a prisoner had to get permission from a goon to fetch it, or prevail on one of the camp security staff to do so. From September 1942, sentries patrolled inside the perimeter fence during the day and outside at night. When darkness fell, Hundeführers, with Alsatian sniffer dogs, roamed the compound, which was bathed in light from powerful lamps mounted along the fence. Even the ground below the prisoners’ feet was under surveillance. A ring of microphones was sunk nine feet into the soil around the perimeter at ten-yard intervals, connected to a listening post in the Kommandantur where monitors listened for sounds of tunnelling.

  At first it took 500 to 600 Germans to run and guard the camp. They were all drawn from the Luftwaffe, as the authorities had decided that each service should be responsible for its prisoner-of-war counterparts. Many of the guards were flak-gunners who had been allowed a break from their duties on the Eastern Front and were grateful for a temporary respite from the carnage. Above them were the camp security staff, the Abwehr, who operated separately from both the camp administration and the companies of guards. They were under the control of the camp security officer, a Major Peschel. He had a small staff of three or four junior officers who controlled specialist teams of five or six men which were under the co
mmand of a sergeant. They wore dark blue overalls and Luftwaffe field caps but carried no weapons. The prisoners called them ‘ferrets’. Their job was to counter escape activity. To begin with they were as amateur in detecting escapes as the prisoners were in planning them. But like their charges they were quick learners. Soon a battle of wits began that would never reach a conclusion. The ferrets seemed to relish the contest. They were conscientious and cunning. ‘They crouched under huts looking for tunnels, dug spikes into the ground… peered through windows, eavesdropped and entered rooms,’ the camp history reported.7

  The ferrets and the prisoners had a complicated relationship. They soon recognized each other as worthy adversaries. Experience of each others’ wiles brought a wary mutual respect that sometimes shaded into affection. The chief ferret was Oberfeldwebel (Warrant Officer) Hermann Glemnitz. The prisoners called him ‘Dimwits’, but he was far from stupid and his sharp ears and keen eyes would detect many a tunnel in the early stages of construction. He and his charges got on surprisingly well. As a young man he had worked abroad – in Britain or America, according to different accounts – and he could speak good English. Aidan Crawley, a pre-war journalist and man about town, and a prominent figure on successive escape committees, remembered his ‘friendly and bluff manner. Prisoners liked him because as far as was known he was one of the few incorruptible Germans and yet he had a sense of humour.’ Glemnitz never seemed depressed and enjoyed cracking jokes. ‘Well, why are you not digging today?’ he would ask. ‘It’s bad weather to be above ground.’ There was method, though, in his bonhomie. ‘Glemnitz was talkative and observant, going frequently into prisoners’ rooms and haranguing them about politics or any other subject: yet all the time he was on the lookout for signs of escape activity.’8

  Corporal Karl Pilz, known as ‘Charlie’, was another cunning adversary, ‘a curious mixture of humanity and subversiveness. He had a genuine understanding of what a prisoner’s life was like and frequently overlooked small irregularities which it was his duty to report.’ He treated his struggle with the prisoners in a sporting manner, as a game with recognized rules. ‘Tunnels in particular he regarded with the eye of an expert. If they were the efforts of new recruits he would pour scorn on them and ask why they were wasting their time. On the other hand a good tunnel aroused his admiration and he would take endless photographs for his escape museum.’ Not that he ever neglected his duties. He ‘could smell a tunnel from a hundred yards away and had a nasty criminal mind which worked on exactly the same wavelength as any escaper’s,’ wrote Tommy Calnan, a serial escaper. ‘Charlie was a menace.’9

  The Luftwaffe were always keen to establish common ground with their captives. Those who had flying experience encouraged the idea that, whatever differences might divide their governments, aviators shared a common code. On the train taking Bill Ash from Paris to Dulag Luft were some Luftwaffe fighter pilots from Saint-Omer, returning home on leave. It was the home base of the aircraft that had shot him down. ‘When they learned that an RAF pilot was on board, they came to our compartment to meet me and, since several of them spoke reasonable English, to have a professional chat,’ he wrote.10 He was not in the mood. ‘Ideas of the camaraderie of the air and the whole conflict being something the higher-ups arranged among themselves and nothing to do with us little fellows who simply laid our lives on the line… belonged as far as I was concerned to another war and another film.’ He had nothing to say to them and if they left thinking his reticence was due to the fact that he had been bested by them in an air battle, ‘that was all right with me’.

  The captors’ desire to show a human face to their prisoners was not insincere. As the prisoners soon learned, the Germans were able to operate with equal ease at either extreme of the spectrum of human behaviour. To those such as the British who they regarded as blood kin, they showed consideration and respect. For those languishing at what the Nazis believed to be the foot of the racial totem pole there was only unbounded cruelty. At the same time as Stalag Luft III was being built, other camps were under construction all over the German empire, to imprison the Reich’s enemies. Those inside them, the Jews, Gipsies and homosexuals, the political and religious undesirables, could expect only starvation, brutalization and, sooner or later, death. Occasionally, the British and Allied prisoners of war would catch a glimpse of this parallel world from which pity had been banished. The temptation was to shudder and count your blessings. But the knowledge of the depravity that lay beneath the authorities’ civilized veneer hovered at the back of every prisoner’s mind.

  The camp’s commandant seemed the antithesis of Nazi inhumanity. Colonel Friedrich-Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau was an efficient and civilized man who spoke English well. In the summer of 1942 he was sixty-one years old, a First World War veteran who had been wounded three times and won the Iron Cross twice. He came out of retirement in 1937 to join the staff of the Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Göring. Acting as chief jailer to Allied aviators was not much to his taste. The prisoners, even those who caused him the most trouble, nonetheless found him ‘an erect, elderly soldier of the old school, very fair and correct’.11 Bill Ash, who would cause him endless trouble, shared this opinion. ‘He generally had our respect,’ he wrote, ‘if rarely our obedience.’12

  Lindeiner-Wildau followed, as closely as circumstances allowed, the policy for the treatment of prisoners of war laid down in the Geneva Convention of 27 July 1929, to which the Germany of the Weimar Republic had been a signatory. Given the Nazis’ innate contempt for international law and their record of tearing up inherited agreements which placed any restraints on their actions, it seems at first sight strange that they continued to stick to this one. The explanation for this uncharacteristic behaviour is probably that by honouring it they ensured good treatment for their own prisoners in British hands. In any event, this document would, to an important degree, shape the lives of Allied prisoners for much of the war.

  The ninety-seven articles, drawn up by the International Committee of the Red Cross, prescribed a regime based on the highest civilized principles. It decreed that prisoners of war ‘shall at all times be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence’.13 Under its provisions, captives were to be held well away from battle zones, enjoying the same shelter, food and medical care as German troops in barracks. In addition to official rations they were entitled to receive comforts from outside – most significantly the famous food parcels supplied by the Red Cross itself. Officers were not required to work. Other ranks might be, but under the same conditions as German workers. The authorities were expected to ‘encourage as much as possible the organization of intellectual and sporting pursuits’. They took this seriously. The camp was awash with books and the inmates put on regular theatrical productions, sometimes with costumes brought in from Berlin. The safeguards and provisions went on and on. If implemented they provided an environment in which prisoners would be kept reasonably healthy and well-nourished in mind and body. Lindeiner-Wildau and those above him made an effort to follow the convention, though the quality and quantity of food supplied to the prisoners would often fall short of the standard. By appearing to at least try and play by the rules they hoped the prisoners would do likewise, and develop a cooperative attitude. It seemed a logical strategy. As the Germans would soon discover, it did not take account of the special character of the men they were dealing with.

  TWO

  Bill and Paddy spent the first days learning the ways of the camp and adjusting to their new circumstances. On arrival the newcomers had been treated to a welcoming address from Lindeiner-Wildau in which he let them know that ‘for you the war is over’. It was a phrase they had all heard on many occasions since being captured. Previously it had sounded somewhat melodramatic and slightly absurd. Now it carried the ring of truth. The journey was at an end and they had reached their final destination. The realization produced mixed reactions. ‘The prisoner’s first sensation on reaching the seclusion of the barbe
d wire was one of relief,’ wrote Aidan Crawley, who arrived at Stalag Luft III about this time. At last he ceased to be “on show.” Having been stared at, pointed at, segregated from those around him by special guards, perhaps interrogated for long hours, he was among his own people.’1

  A man had time for proper reflection, a chance to think back over the events that had landed him where he was. The first thing everyone recognized was that they had a great deal to be thankful for. ‘It is hard to over-emphasize just how much the average pilot had been through,’ wrote Bill Ash. ‘Every single one of us had been through some catastrophic shooting down, parachute experience or crash landing in enemy territory.’2 The feat of escaping from a stricken aircraft was a huge triumph over the odds. Nine out of ten aircrew in such circumstances never managed to struggle free and died ghastly deaths. Once on the ground there were more dangers to contend with: trigger-happy troops or angry civilians catching a first sight of the men who were dropping bombs on them. It seemed to Richard Passmore, who had been shot down in a Blenheim bomber early in the war, that ‘each of us was a walking miracle – a man who should not have been alive but was. We listened to the endless succession of stories… in amazement at the huge and unimaginable – if not downright impossible – variety of ways in which death had allowed itself to be cheated.’3