ESCAPES FROM WW1 POW CAMPS IN BRITAIN
Colin R Chapman takes a look at successful escapes from World War I POW camps, dispelling the myth that only one such escape was successful
Dr Colin Chapman sheds light on a little-known aspect of First World War research & the successful escapees
During WW1 the Central Powers, Germany and her Empire, with Austro-hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, were pitted against the Allied Powers, Britain and her Empire, with France, Belgium, Russia, and America from May 1917, both Powers imprisoning civilians and combatants from the outset.
Escapes, some successful, others resulting in re-capture, from Prisoner of War (POW) camps around the world have been described in a variety of languages by many authors. Not all accounts of escapes have been translated from original texts, rendering them less well-known than others in, for example, the Englishspeaking world. Even escapes that were reported in contemporary English-language media have clearly been overlooked by those who, unlike serious family historians delving into archives and scouring newspapers for historical data, rely on publications that for decades have been deftly advertised but poorly referenced. This article, based on my research over many years in a variety of sources, named here, identifies some escapes from POW Camps, particularly in Britain, but also dispels the myth, promulgated on Wikipedia and elsewhere [1] that during World War I only one POW escapee from a camp in Britain reached his homeland.
Who were the POWS?
To better understand who the World War I prisoner of war escapees were, and what motivated them to escape (even if, in general, quickly recaptured) from a relatively safe environment insulated from bloody conflict, it is helpful to understand the conditions, from where and to where they were planning to escape. Indeed, who were these prisoners of war anyway?
To give us a measure of the numbers involved, according to Statistical Information Regarding the Armies at Home and Abroad [2], the Allied Powers altogether in January 1919 held 507,215 POWS, 128,043 of them in camps in the British Isles. The conditions under which POWS should be accommodated, clothed and fed were regulated by the Geneva and Hague Conventions of 1906 and 1907, to which both Britain and Germany were signatories. Civilian and Officer POWS could not be compelled to work, unlike ‘other ranks’. As a consequence, for convenient management, these three categories were mostly housed in separate camps – although officers were permitted to have a few ‘other ranks’ as orderlies. Incidentally, the international Conventions also permitted punishment of escapees. In general, both Britain and Germany adhered to the regulations though, particularly during 1914, there were some exceptions and a small number of camp commandants were outrageously brutal.
Within a matter of hours of war being declared in August 1914 alien civilians (the term immigrants might be used today) in Britain were
arrested, questioned and if deemed a potential threat to national security, were categorised as ‘enemy aliens’ and detained. Some were soon released back to their local communities, but as public fear of Germanic influence increased, whipped up particularly by the Northcliffe press during such incidents as the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 and the Battle of the Somme in 1916, many civilians were rearrested and interned as war prisoners for the remainder of the conflict.
Meanwhile, more and more Central Powers’ combatants were captured as the war progressed; but on the Western Front using POW camps in Europe proved untenable for Britain because of the relative ease by which an enemy escapee might rejoin his unit. Thus, many facilities to hold enemy POWS were commandeered or constructed across Britain itself and thousands of the captured were shipped across the Channel. As Heather Jones relates in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War (2014) ‘due to Britain’s island geography it was extremely rare for a prisoner of war to regain his liberty from a British home-front camp in this way. Escapes from prisoner of war labour companies on the Western Front, in contrast, were more frequent for all belligerent forces during the second half of the war.’
Filling the labour gap
Simultaneously with great numbers of civilian and combatant POWS being held and requiring accommodation in Britain, British industry and agriculture were suffering increasingly from a depleted workforce created by men ‘joining up’, initially voluntarily and more so with the introduction of conscription in February 1916. A pragmatic solution was to utilise Central Powers’ POWS to fill Britain’s labour gap. Hence, applying the Command framework, satellite working camps were opened across the British Isles at locations where specific manual skills such as quarrying, forestry and farmwork were missing. Although separate officers’ camps and civilian camps were also opened for those who were denied work, a few individuals from these categories volunteered to labour to alleviate their imposed boredom.
The 1914 German Army Regulations, Section 2, Paragraph 32 specifically stated ‘Officers who have been taken prisoner by the enemy, must do everything possible in order to rejoin their units.’ This policy was reiterated by escapee Gustav Lutz who was recaptured in Suffolk in May 1917, having got away from Pattishall Camp a few days before with two fellow POWS [3]. Escapees, perhaps already ashamed of the indignity of capture, might also be overtly demonstrating loyalty to their own powers whilst offering subtle support by diverting opponents’ military personnel from combatant roles to additional guard and recapture duties. For some POWS just devising an escape plan was a therapeutic mental exercise. On the other hand, it should not be overlooked that not all civilian and combatant prisoners from warring powers were committed loyalists – prior to the war some had chosen to live, work and marry in what became an opponent’s country while others, during the war, were grudging conscripts.
The first escapes
My research on escapes from WW1 POW Camps, by studying numerous TNA files [ADM, CAB, FO, HO and WO series], editions of the Police
Gazette and over 30 national and local newspaper titles, has concentrated on Pattishall and its nearly 200 satellite working camps within Eastern Command, together holding around 22,000 POWS, none of whom, incidentally, was a military officer.
Some POWS escaped temporarily with comrades, others individually. I have discovered 79 named POWS and 39 un-named (those accounts state, for example, solely ‘a prisoner of war’) who got away from captivity in Eastern Command and, unlike officer escapees, mostly explained they were simply bored while a few had fallen out with fellow POWS. The first to escape from Pattishall itself was on 28 October 1914, although merchant seaman Alfred Stockhurst was less than a mile away when he was caught and returned to the camp. A group of six uniformed sailors and a soldier, each described in great detail in local newspapers, broke out from Pattishall in August 1917 but were found three days later sound asleep, having taken off their boots, beside a haystack about 14 miles away.
The last (unsuccessful) escapee, combatant Heinrich Schultz, had travelled some 15 miles before being recaptured on 11 August 1919 after a week on the run. Of the 79 Eastern Command escapees, 70, as with Stockhurst and Schultz, are named in the records I have examined, describing when and where recaptured. Of the 39 un-named men, 31 recaptures are reported. I have not interpreted the situation, just because 17 of the named and un-named POWS are not reported as recaptured, that they were able to get back to Germany or other homeland – I have assumed, although not finding evidence of a totally successful escape, that these escapees were re-captured within Eastern Command or elsewhere and merely unreported, or as yet undiscovered by me.
There were, however, several successful escapes from WW1 POW Camps in the UK – see page 47 of a 1920 report in WO 106/1451 at The National Archives. The first two escapes I have been able to confirm were on 28 May 1915 by German Lt Alfred Klapproth (age 30), together with Lt Friedrich N Wiener (age 35), an Austrian. They were in the Officers’ Camp at Lofthouse Park, Yorkshire. Their joint escape was published in the Police Gazette on 1 June and in The Times on 2 June [5]. Leaving England, they travelled first to Denmark, when the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published their story as related by Wiener (sometimes spelled Weiner). His account was reprinted by the German Frankfurter Zeitung and then by the Rothwell Courier & Times on 3 July 1915. The latter local paper details their journey via Liverpool by train to London and then, taking four days, on the steamer
Tomsk to Copenhagen; from there Klapproth returned to Germany and Wiener to Austria.
The best-known breakout?
The escape by military pilot Lt Gunther Plūschow (age 29) with Ober-leutnant Oskar Trefftz on 4 July 1915 from another Officers’ Camp, Donington Hall in Leicestershire, is probably the best known (yet often inaccurately reported) break-out from a World War I POW Camp in Britain, albeit successful only for Plūschow.
The pair travelled separately to London where Trefftz was recaptured (in Millwall Docks), whereas Plūschow managed to smuggle himself on the Princess Juliana a Dutch steamer (berthed at Tilbury) to Vlissingen, and got back to Germany on 13 July 1915. He had earlier, in November 1914, evaded capture in China, managed to get to America but, on his way home to Germany, was captured by the British in Gibraltar, held in Dorchester, then Holyport POW Camps, and in February 1915 sent to Donington Hall.
Only five months later, back in his Fatherland, he soon publicised his full story in his 1916 book Die Abenteuer des Fliegers von Tsingtau; this was translated into English and published in 1932 with a title changed to appeal to British readers as My Escape from Donington Hall. An extract from this appeared in Escapers All, a 1932 compilation of seventeen WW1 POW escapes, though mostly by British officers from camps in Germany. Several edited versions of Plūschow’s text were subsequently produced, further widely publicising his exploits – which may explain why he is often (though erroneously) referred to as the only World War I POW to have successfully escaped from Britain.
On 2 September 1915 39 yearold Capt Johannes Schmidt-klafleth escaped from the civilian internment camp at Alexandra Palace in north London. Because he was a merchant seaman, and thus a civilian, his incarceration was with other civilians and not with combatant Germans. He had been taken off the Chirlos on 10 October 1915, it having been impounded in Plymouth, and interned initially at Newbury POW Camp in Berkshire. Johannes reached neutral ground in Europe on 11 September and his successful return to Germany was reported, but not until 4 October 1915, in the Berlin newspaper Vossische Zeitung, then in The Times on 5 October (though using only Schmidt for his surname) [6.] and on 8 October in the local newspaper, the Tottenham & Edmonton Weekly Herald.
In the following year, according to The Times on 28 June [7] civilian Heinrich Freidrich Kröpke (age 34) escaped, also from Alexandra Palace; actually he was Wilhelm Kröpke.
In his 79-page Meine Flucht aus englischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1916, Kröpke described the saga of his original arrest (as an enemy alien) in Nigeria on 9 August 1914, his temporary incarceration in Ibadan, about 85 miles inland from Lagos, transportation (via a Southampton ‘POW clearing camp’) to Queen’s Ferry, his abortive escape from that Welsh camp and recapture, his transfer to Alexandra Palace, and his successful escape from there, via Scotland and Copenhagen to Germany. As far as I know, Kröpke’s amazing account, published in 1938, is not available in English.
Sinn Fein escapees
It may be useful in this chronological account of WW1 escapees, to mention seven prisoners, members of Sinn Fein, four of whom were held at this time in Usk Jail, and three in Lincoln
Jail. A century ago, all were regarded by some as prisoners of war. Herbert (Barney) Mellows (age 28), Frank Shouldice (age 25), Joseph Mcgrath (age 28) and George Geraghty (age 40) successfully escaped from Usk on 24 January 1919; the Lincoln trio, Eamon de Lavera (age 35), Sean Milroy (age 45) and Sean Mcgarry (age 31), escaped on 4 February 1919.
Unlike the Central Powers’ prisoners held in Britain, who relied solely on their own initiatives, these Irish prisoners in both jails had received considerable outside assistance from friends and families who corresponded often, and covertly, using tactics such as sending in keys hidden in buns and cakes. But as this article centres around Central Powers’ escapees, further elaboration on this septet is unnecessary here.
After the Armistice
It is not surprising that attempts at escape from camps in Britain continued well after the 11 November 1918 Armistice, for widespread repatriation of German POWS did not commence until implementation of the Versailles Peace Treaty in mid1919. Indeed, 29 of the Eastern Command escapes I mentioned above took place in 1919. 29-year-old submariner Arnold Feil, rescued from the U-124 when sunk on 20 July 1918 and taken prisoner, was then held at the Pattishall parent POW Camp.
In a memoir he later described his frustration at still being in captivity in August 1919; he detailed his escape that month from Pattishall via Leicester, Boston, Grimsby and
Finland, arriving 43 days later in Hamburg on 8 October 1919. Although this escape was not advertised and never formally published, a colleague and I have checked in contemporary timetables the locations, distances and train connections quoted in Feil’s account and all appear genuine; so I have to conclude he was yet another of the several successful escapees reaching home from a World War I POW Camp in Britain.
About the author
Colin R Chapman, formerly a professional scientist and engineer, is a speaker and published author internationally on topics relating to family and social history and heraldry.
He founded or co-founded six British county-based family history societies and is currently President of three and Patron of a fourth. He is a Vice President of the Society of Genealogists and of the Family History Federation. He is a recognised authority on WW1 POW and Internment Camps in the British Isles. crc@lochinpublishing.org.uk
Endnotes
1 e.g. Daily Mail 10 Feb 2011, University of Nottingham press release 23 Oct 2019, Your Thurrock 18 Apr 2020
2 TNA: WO/394/20
3 East Suffolk Gazette 8 May 1917, p.8, col.d.
4 Northampton Independent 18 May 1918, p.26, col.b.
5 p.6, col.d.
6 p.7, col.e.
7 p.5, col.c.