OTTAWA HAD ITS VERSION OF THE GREAT ESCAPE
Captured German fighter pilot fled train and hitchhiked to the capital
Think about a daring Second World War prison break. Images of a motorcycle-riding Steve McQueen jumping over a barbedwire fence in The Great Escape probably come to mind.
But there is another wartime escape that was turned into a Hollywood film — and this reallife story happened right here in Ottawa.
On a cold January morning in 1941, a captured Luftwaffe ace was on a train near Ottawa, bound for a prisoner-of-war camp. He jumped from the guarded train, and went on to become the only Axis PoW to successfully escape and make it all the way back to Germany.
His name was Capt. Franz von Werra, and his escape was made into a Hollywood film that premièred in Smiths Falls.
With the Battle of Britain raging in the skies over England, British Royal Air Force Spitfires and German Luftwaffe Messerschmitts duelled for air supremacy in one of the most fiercely fought battles of the war.
A credited ace pilot in the Luftwaffe, then Oberleutnant Franz Werra of Jagdgeschwader 3 was shot down in his Messerschmitt BF-109E-4 over England by the RAF in September 1940.
His aircraft disabled, von Werra crash landed in a farm field near Kent and was quickly apprehended as he emerged from the cockpit. Now in the custody of the British military police, von Werra began his attempts at escape.
Having tried unsuccessfully to escape three times from his British captors, once disguising him- self as a Dutch pilot and trying to steal a British Hawker Hurricane, it was decided the inventive 26-year-old von Werra should be sent to a remote prisoner-of-war camp on the shores of Lake Superior near Thunder Bay, Ont.
The PoW camp known as Neys Camp 100 was to become the home for many captured German officers during the war, and, in January 1941, von Werra was shipped across the Atlantic to Canada to join them.
Docking in Halifax, the German PoWs were put on a train that would take them through New Brunswick, Montreal, Ottawa and finally to their destination at Neys.
von Werra knew the route was going to take them within 80 kilometres of the border with the U.S., a country that was still neutral in 1941.
With the train and its heavily armed Canadian guards now heading out from the station in Montreal, von Werra had to act quickly to pull off his escape.
With a typically cold Canadian winter freezing all the train windows shut, von Werra used his body heat to thaw the ice on window and open it.
Passing through Ottawa and approaching the station in Smiths Falls, von Werra knew it was now or never if he had any chance of making it to the border. Leaving Smiths Falls, von Werra signalled his fellow prisoners to make a diversion by folding a blanket in front of him, then slid open the window and jumped head first into the snow below.
There are conflicting reports of what happened next. von Werra claimed he jumped off the train near Wakefield, Que., and hitchhiked into Ottawa pretending to be French.
He said he ate lunch at a restaurant on Sparks Street, then picked up a map at a gas station and hitchhiked his way down the Prescott Highway (Now Hwy. 416) to the St. Lawrence River. Newspapers of the time also report this version of events, but military officials insisted he escaped after the stop in Smiths Falls.
Regardless, von Werra did jump out the window of the train and ended up heading south for the border.
In both accounts, he picked up a map from a garage and plotted his escape route. Trudging through the snow and cold darkness of the countryside to avoid detection, von Werra made his way to the Prescott Highway, where he hitchhiked south to Johnstown. Once in Johnstown, von Verra could see across the frozen water of the St. Lawrence the lights of Ogdensburg, N.Y., and potential freedom.
Through the biting cold, von Werra persevered toward his goal of reaching the U.S., slowly shuffling across the ice of the St. Lawrence.
But halfway across he encountered open water, forcing him to turn back. Determined, von Werra scoured the shoreline and found a rowboat, dragging it across the ice to traverse the open water.
Frostbitten and nearly frozen, he managed to crawl across the ice toward his goal of reaching the shore of the neutral United States. Stumbling into the nearest building, he turned himself in as an officer of the German Luftwaffe, requesting diplomatic immunity.
What happened afterwards was a sequence of political red tape. No one expected a German PoW to enter the United States. He was charged by U.S. Immigration with illegal entry, and Canadian officials tried to extradite their prisoner back to Canada.
While the U.S. and Canadian authorities negotiated his extradition, the German vice-consul in the U.S. brought him to New York City, where he experienced all that Manhattan had to offer, exuberantly sharing his escape story.
von Werra then made his way to Mexico, then on to South America and Rio de Janeiro. From there, he headed to Barcelona and Rome, then back to Germany. Once back in his homeland, he was hailed a hero, and Adolf Hitler, upon hearing of his escape, awarded him the Iron Cross.
Then 27, von Verra rejoined the Luftwaffe, married his sweetheart and reportedly convinced the Nazis to treat Allied prisoners as he was treated by his British and Canadian captors. Through his comments, von Werra is believed to have increased efforts to improve the conditions of Allied prisoners in German custody.
The escape artist returned to action, patrolling the Dutch coast in his new Messerschmitt BF109F. On Oct. 25 1941, while on routine patrol, von Werra experienced engine failure and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean from which there was no escape. No trace of either his aircraft or of von Werra were ever found.
The story of the only Axis PoW to escape home seems so fantastic that it could be from a Hollywood movie, and that’s exactly what happened.
In 1958, his story was made into a film entitled The One That Got Away.
From the place where the grand escape began, and with much fanfare, the North American première of the movie was held at the Soper Theatre in Smiths Falls on March 6, 1958. But like the star of the film, the Soper Theatre met a similar fate in 2012 and was lost to demolition without a trace.
Both the air ace and the theatre in the town that spawned this historical escape remain lost in time.