Daring Colditz escape of tragic MP is revealed
THE late Tory politician Airey Neave’s dramatic account of his escape from Colditz castle has gone on public display for the first time.
Lt Neave was the first British officer to make a “home run” from the notorious German prison camp during the Second World War.
A troop commander aged 24 in the Royal Artillery, he was wounded and captured by the Germans near Calais during the British retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940.
He fled immediately but was recaptured and sent to the maximum security Colditz in eastern Germany. He and a Dutch officer escaped disguised as German officers.
Hunted
It took him six weeks to make his fake uniform using a great coat, stage scenery paint and epaulettes carved out of lino.
On a freezing night in January 1942 the pair got through the trapdoor but came across a sentry. “We returned his punctilious salute and walked into the second courtyard. The sentry there also saluted and the two sergeants standing by fell in behind us.”
The pair berated a German corporal who failed to salute them then climbed from the moat into the castle park where they faced a 12ft stone icy wall. Scaling it was “one of the most unpleasant experiences of the escape”. It took them 35 minutes, with a dog patrol out and searchlights likely to spot them. On the other side they avoided tripwires, before dumping their German uniforms and carrying on in workmen’s clothes made from PoW uniforms.
They walked seven miles to a station, making it to Leipzig and escaped again from a police station after being arrested. Near the Swiss border they, were hunted by dogs. “We hid in a small hut and slept there; weather conditions were terrible and the temperature was -17°C”. They then crawled across 200 yards of snow-covered open ground to reach Switzerland.
Once back in Britain Lt Neave was recruited as an intelligence agent to help other prisoners get out.
Lt Neave, inset, drew a map of his 500-mile escape, right, and sketched a plan of Colditz which is also on display at The National Archives at Kew in London. He became a Tory MP in 1953 but was assassinated by The Irish National Liberation Army in 1979. He was 63.
● The free exhibition Great Escapes: Remarkable Second World War Captives, runs until July 21.