Reid wrote the book on escape from Colditz

The 16th century castle overlooking the Mulde River had once been home to Saxon kings. But it had later been turned into a workhouse for the poor, then a mental asylum. By 1942 the only residents of Colditz Castle were POWS and their guards. Its thick walls and sheer cliffs, originally meant for its defence against invading armies, had proven such an effective deterrent to escapees in the past that the Germans had used it for prisoners since 1939.

At first the internees had been people deemed undesirable by the Nazis – homosexuals, Jews and communists. However, as WWII dragged on it was decided it could be better used to house the most escape prone of Allied prisoners. It was assumed POWS would be unable to breach the walls or tunnel out of the centuries-old fortress as they had at other camps.

But British soldier Pat Reid was one of over 30 men who proved the Germans wrong. Reid escaped from Colditz in October 1942 by first gaining access to a kitchen, where he and three fellow prisoners cut bars on the window. They climbed out onto the kitchen roof, from where they had to cross a well-lit yard with a garden crawling with sentries.

They were supposed to wait for a signal from a band, conducted by Douglas “Tin Legs” Bader, but that signal was thwarted by a guard who became suspicious. Fortunately they avoided detection and made it to the commandant’s section of the castle, the Kommandantur.

They had a skeleton key to let them into a storeroom from which they would continue their escape, but the key wouldn’t work, so they went down into a cellar. The cellar had an air shaft that let out above a dry moat, but they had to strip naked to fit through it. Once out, they put their clothes back on and, using knotted sheets, lowered themselves down to the moat, climbed a boundary fence into a park that surrounded that part of the castle.