CARRY ON ESCAPING
While Allied Prisoner of War escape stories abound and are widely familiar, they are mostly told from the escapers’ viewpoint. Robin Schäfer and Andy Saunders delve into the archives to uncover some escape stories as viewed by the captors.
Stories of Allied POWS escaping from prison camps are legendary and a familiar genre of many post-war books that covered dramatic and famous escapes. The editorial team delve into German archives to view escape attempts from the captor’s perspective.
Castle Tittmoning, perched on a rocky spur above the village of the same name, was built in the 12th century and owned by the powerful archdiocese of Salzburg to protect the border with neighbouring Bavaria. In the second half of the 15th century, it was turned into a Gothic fortress, naturally protected by the cut of an ancient river terrace on one side and a deep ditch on the other, the castle only accessible across a long, wooden bridge to the main gate or a narrow winding path to a smaller rear gate. These features were ideal for defence, and for centuries the castle was a regional centrepiece, militarily and politically. On the outbreak of war in 1939, though, it was put to different usage: a Prisoner of War camp.
In the decades following the Second World War, Allied POW escape stories in books, films, and TV programmes have
proved popular. Often in the style of ‘Boys’ Own’ adventures, such accounts are invariably presented from the escaper’s perspective. Thus, it is fascinating to view escape attempts through the official reports of Oflag VII-D, sent to the Abwehr office of Wehrkreis VII in Munich, now held in German archives.
FEW COMPLAINTS
In the summer of 1940, work started on turning Castle Tittmoning into a POW camp; to be precise, an Offizierslager (Oflag), or officer’s camp. Toilets and showers were installed by local craftsmen and a kitchen, canteen and room for potato peeling were situated on the ground floor of the renaissance palace building. Beneath, in deep cellars, coal and potatoes were stored. Meanwhile, the granary was converted into living quarters, the upper floor separated into single rooms for officers. General officers, doctors and clergymen were accommodated in small houses opposite, while the chapel offered a place of religious contemplation.
One of the most important rooms was the post office, in House No. 9, where mail was controlled by an adjacent postal monitoring office. The same building housed the telephone exchange, quartermaster’s office, and camp administration. The latter comprised several clerks, camp commandant, deputy commandant, one officer of the German Army intelligence service (Abwehr) and two translators. The neighbouring infirmary included a hospital and dental surgery. Conditions in the camp were generally described as good, with few complaints by prisoners or neutral observers of the Red Cross, YMCA etc. Although often stated that the camp opened as Oflag VII-D, there is clear evidence that it was opened as Oflag VII C/Z when the camp staff moved in on 25 August 1940.
By March 1941, however, the designation changed to Oflag VII-D; an ‘overflow’ camp for officers from Oflag VII C in Castle Lauffen, 20 km distant. The first prisoners, 24 British officers including one General and nine orderlies, arrived on 30 August 1940.
In February 1942, all prisoners were transferred to Oflag VII-B in Eichstätt, the castle becoming an internment camp (Internierungslager) for men from the Channel Islands. As a sub-camp of Ilag VII, it became Ilag VII/Z and was liberated in May 1945.
HIGH SECURITY
When the castle was converted to a POW camp, high security was installed: machine gun and sentry posts were set up, windows barred, and doors and locks reinforced and modernised. Outside, the walls were surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, wooden watch towers and a walkway for sentries. In the outer ward, north of the western gate, eight kennels for guard dogs were installed. At night, the courtyard was illuminated by floodlights and searchlights and the outside wire entanglements could also be illuminated via a switch in the guardroom.
The main guardroom was located at the northern gate, the castle guarded by one NCO, 28 men and three dog handlers. Officers and guards not on duty were quartered in the village itself, with the guards drawn from Landesschützen formations of Wehrkreis VII.
Notwithstanding numerous escape attempts made from Oflag VII-D, however, standing instructions to guards made it clear they should not treat prisoners unreasonably after escape attempts. It was pointed out that it was the duty of prisoners to attempt to escape. Thus, the guards could quite expect the men in their charge to carry on escaping.
Eight guards were permanently on duty at strategic sentry positions in and outside the castle:
• Sentry 1, armed with a pistol in daytime and a rifle at night, guarded the north entrance and regulated traffic
• Sentry 2, armed with a rifle, was located in front of the north entrance gate. At night, he would go on a circling patrol across and beneath the entrance bridge
• Sentry 3 patrolled the northern front of the castle at all times, keeping watch on windows and doors, and controlled wire entanglements
• Sentry 4 manned a heavy machine gun on the northwestern side of the castle, covering the northwest and
western side. He was also equipped with a portable searchlight
• Sentry 5 guarded the barbed wire gate on the western entrance of the castle (At night, he also patrolled towards the southern side)
• Sentry 6 patrolled the ornamental garden by night
• Sentry 7 manned another heavy machine gun on the southwest corner
• Sentry 8 operated the third heavy machine gun on the southeast corner (A fourth heavy machine gun and additional light MG34 were kept in reserve in the armoury, as was a box of stick-grenades)
These measures were to ensure that nobody would ever be able to escape the fortress prison. However, the first escape was conducted before the regular complement of 180 officer prisoners and 30 orderlies had even moved in.
ABESEILING WITH STOLEN ROPE
In August 1940, in the final construction phase of the camp, 25 British POWS were employed as a work party and on the night of 20-21 August, three prisoners, John Doherty (No.535), Arthur Henderson (No.5778) and Thomas Stevenson (No.5784) decided to make a run for it.
Interestingly, Henderson and Stevenson were registered as ‘civilian prisoners’, both being British volunteers for the Finnish Army during the Winter War. They had joined up in London in 1940, and as a volunteer fighting unit were known as ‘Group Sisu’. Formed too late to make it to the frontline during the Winter War, many remained in Finland until 28 June 1941, when Britain broke diplomatic relations. In April 1940, however, several volunteers found themselves in Norway during the German invasion and were captured.
With great force, the men broke the lock of the door into the Great Hall and climbed the stairs leading to the wall walk. Using a rope taken a few days earlier from the church in Tittmoning, they abseiled to a window below where they were lucky to find a ladder leaning against the wall, left by German workmen.
From here, they simply walked through an open gate in the wire fence and got away without having been seen by anyone. They were caught at a sentry post, three days later, trying to cross a bridge over the Salzach near Hallein, Austria.
During interrogation, the three gave conflicting evidence. The German report notes they took no food supplies, intending to live from ‘roots and turnips’ on their way to Graz. They had no maps, but a small pocket compass which Stevenson claimed to have found in a haystack in Laufen, while Henderson claimed he already owned the compass in Finland. The group was armed with a large butcher’s knife stolen from a garden in Tittmoning. None carried any money. While they claimed that nobody knew of their escape plans, it was discovered that prisoners Williams (No. 1531) and South (No. 1525) supplied a leather flying jacket and pair of army trousers to aid the escape.
RESOURCEFUL PRISONERS CAUGHT TUNNELING
On 3 March 1941, Sonderführer (Z) Müller and Oberfeldwebel Fäustle of Landesschützen-bataillon 510 were on an unscheduled patrol and on entering house No. 199 were alerted by strange noises and: ‘…surprised two British officer prisoners, Captain Cyril Owen Lewthwaite (Nr. 901) and 2nd Ltn. Clement Adrian Elson (1) (No. 28) digging a tunnel in an old smoke chamber next to the toilet room’.
Using simple tools like pocket knives and an old fire poker, they had dug a tunnel to a depth of 6.5 meters and a width of 1.5 meters down through the ancient and brittle stone of the wall of the first floor where the tunnel ‘…then continued in an oblique direction, so that it can be assumed that it had been the prisoners’ intention to dig beneath the sentry walkway and castle wall until they reached the moat. From there, they would have found it easy to escape.’
The German report continues by stating that: ‘…of course, both men deny having had accomplices.’
The waste material had been transported to the attic where it was hidden ‘in dark corners under the floorboards.’ To transport the waste, the prisoners fashioned containers from:
‘ …legs of Wehrmacht property footstools and wooden boards. The iron fittings are parts of former fire pokers, of
the kind generally used for digging – along with coal shovels and coal and water buckets. The rope had been laboriously braided from pieces of old string. The carabiner on the end of the rope has been removed from the pull-rope of the flagpole.’
In addition, the resourceful prisoners fashioned a ‘mining lamp from an old tin, some melted butter and an old piece of fabric’.
The discovery of ‘Tunnel No. 1’ led to a flurry of search activity inside the castle and thence to the discovery of ‘Tunnel No. 2’ in an old unused toilet in a neighbouring house, where:
‘…the prisoners climbed down the toilet shaft of about 8 meters and had enlarged a pit, dug 2.20 meters into the soil, probably the former cesspit. From this pit, they had driven a horizontal shaft, about 7 meters long, towards the castle wall on the western side. When works were discovered on 4 March 1941 at 17:00h, there was only about 25 cm of loose soil and stone left to remove.’
In both cases, the prisoners were made to fill and close the tunnels.
MORE TUNNELS
On 1 April 1941, Feldwebel Fleischmann (4./Landesschützenbataillon 445) was doing his rounds when he spotted a stack of bricks at the front wall of the attic in building 201. Having then:
‘…informed the officer in charge; both began to remove the stack of bricks and first discovered a rope ladder and additional ladders, roughly timbered from rafters and clothes poles, as well as tuff stone spoil.’
On orders of the commandant, Major von Spruner, Building 201, which housed the British doctors, was immediately evacuated and a shaft entrance discovered behind a blind door which had been taken from the rubble heap of a wash house demolished in the spring of 1940.
The tunnel shaft was 5.20 meters deep, and at the bottom a tunnel had been driven 3.20 meters towards the northeastern side of the castle; still 4 to 6 meters too short to allow escape. The spoil had been deposited inside an old fireplace and a number of tools, including two shovels, were found. No disciplinary action was taken.
With the number of guards available to him, Major von Spruner found it difficult to thoroughly search the entire
building and perimeter for signs of tunneling or other escape attempts, and on 5 May he requested assistance from the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) in Munich.
His request was granted, and on the morning of 17 May, a column of army lorries and cars rumbled through the streets of Tittmoning towards the castle. On board were 12 Gestapo and Kripo (Kriminalpolizei) officers, four quartermasters and eight clerks of Oflag VII D, three translators and 58 NCOS and enlisted Landesschützen infantrymen. Kommissar Alfred Schuhmann, commandant of the political department of the Munich Gestapo, joined as a ‘special guest’.
At the castle, the imprisoned officers and orderlies were called into the courtyard for a head count and then sent to their quarters. Search parties were then formed to thoroughly search every single room and space, inhabited and empty. In addition, the personal belongings of the prisoners were examined.
While no tunneling activities were uncovered, many ‘prohibited items’ were found, including a steel saw, a bricklayer’s hammer, a large tin opener, a crowbar, nails and screws, three table knives fashioned into daggers, blackout curtains, a large collection of empty tins, homemade maps and compasses (made from Camembert boxes), several wooden boards (numbered on the reverse), buckets of paint, money and all kinds of paperwork. It was a great success for the search parties, even more so as expected conflict with the POWS did not materialise, a report stating: ‘The prisoners acted in a well-mannered and disciplined way.’
Nevertheless, the next escape attempt was already in the planning.
A BARON GOES ABSEILING
Report of 21 May 1941:
‘Yesterday evening at around 13:00, the British POW officer,
(2) 2nd Lieut. Campbell, prisoner no. 223, attempted to escape. He cut the wire protection between the sentry walkway between the west gate and Sentry 3 and the path to the physical exercise area. Then he affixed a rope to a stake of the wire protection and abseiled down the wall into the former moat of the castle where he became entangled in a trip wire below the wall and was spotted by Schütze Meier of the guard company (who had coincidentally walked by) and was placed under arrest.
All this took place in a short period of time. Campbell had less than a minute to enjoy his freedom.
Comrades of his had distracted Sentry 5 with raucous behaviour (at the west gate), so that he failed to notice the lightning-fast escape attempt. Visibility at this spot is limited and the sentry cannot be blamed. On his escape attempt,
Campbell was equipped with a rucksack, civilian trousers (tailored using a dark brown blanket), and a uniform jacket dyed with purple ink and given a makeshift civilian cut. He was carrying good maps, handmade, showing the route to Switzerland and a hand-made compass.
In addition, he was equipped with plenty of food supplies (biscuits, chocolate, hard bread, dates, raisins, sugar) and semi-luxuries (tobacco and cigarettes) and bandage material. A pair of cutting pliers was also found on him. The rope he used to cross the wall had been stolen from the storage room of the firefighting pump and had been extended with bed sheets.
As Campbell was caught within the wire entanglement of the camp, this escape attempt cannot be classified a success.’
OLD ETONIAN ESCAPERS
Report of 3 June 1941:
‘The British POW officers, 2nd Lieut. Mackenzie,(3) Prisoner no. 13 and 2nd Lieut. Orr-ewing,(4) Prisoner no. 15379, staged an escape attempt on 31 May 1941 at 12:45, by driving out of the camp hidden on a rubbish transport.
The tractor pulling the rubbish cart was driven by 18yearold Simon Wallner who was accompanied by Fritz, his brother and two years younger, who was standing on the tierod between tractor and cart.
Shortly after leaving the castle, Fritz Wallner noticed several pieces of rubbish falling from the cart. Then, about 800 meters away from the camp, he saw a figure began to dig its way out of the rubbish. He called to his brother to halt, a POW jumped off and tried to escape into the woods of the Ponlach Ravine, while the other was detained by the boys.
In a very considerate and fearless manner, the two boys threatened to stab the prisoner they had detained unless the
other immediately returned to them. That was successful. One boy then guarded both prisoners, while the other ran off to fetch help from the castle.
Fifteen minutes after the cart left the castle, both prisoners were back and under guard.
The inquiry resulted in the following:
The rubbish cart was delivered at the west gate of the castle at 08:00 from where British orderlies pulled it into the inner courtyard. The rubbish was loaded between 09:30 and about 11:00, interrupted by rollcall at 10:00. As already mentioned, the cart was collected by the Wallner brothers at 12:45. It is likely that both prisoner officers managed to climb onto the cart in a moment when it was not guarded and hid under the rubbish, protected by old pullovers, rags and torn blankets. They did that so well that the sentry on the west gate noticed nothing.
During interrogation, the two - as expected - refused to give evidence. On two instances, however, Mackenzie mentioned it was unfortunate the cart had been accompanied by civilians. If it had been driven by military personnel, they would have knocked the guards down. Mackenzie was immediately informed that an assault on a guard was punishable with incarceration, if not with death! In any case, this proves that during future escape attempts one must expect guards will be attacked.
The two were dressed in dirty trousers and even dirtier pullovers and woolen jackets; civilian dress, even of the homemade kind, was not in their possession. They carried regular British raincoats. Confiscated were two Belgian military knapsacks and several food tins, several pounds of chocolate formed by melting down smaller chocolate bars, several pounds of cheese, hard bread, sugar and raisins. Neither money, maps nor compasses were found.
The Wallner brothers explained the POWS had managed to rid themselves of several items on their way back to the camp. A search only found a few pieces of chocolate, a few sweets and vitamin tablets. It is possible the maps were thrown into the fast-flowing stream by the road as it is unlikely the two intended to escape without good map material, compass or money. During the search on 17 May, a map with the escape route to Switzerland was confiscated from Mackenzie.’
In a follow-up interrogation, Orr Ewing explained he
believed he could find his way to Switzerland by following the railway line from Salzburg to Innsbruck because he had travelled the area before the war.
Interestingly, Mackenzie and Orr Ewing were Old Etonians and although neither were at school together, they would have gravitated towards each other through being fellow alumni. Perhaps the relative ‘privations’ of life in Eton boarding houses had equipped them well through such adventures as nocturnal escape or scaling the school’s large domed library roof. Certainly, it was an education to instill resourcefulness, a code of honour and being a team player. The same may be said of other prisoners with public school backgrounds, of whom there were many. However, at Oflag VII-D, several Old Etonians are identified in escape reports.
Report of 6 June 1941:
‘Attached to this are 8 hand-drawn maps, which the two British officers mentioned before were planning to use on their escape. The maps were found by Frau Fanny Weiss on 31 May at around 13:00 in Tittmoning, in the woods near the road where the rubbish cart had come to a stop. Frau Weiss picked up the satchel with the maps before the guards started their search for objects thrown away by the prisoners.
The maps are very precise and drawn in different scales, all very clear and labour-intensive work. It has to be that they were copied from originals as they have been found in another camp or made from copies smuggled in here hidden inside book covers.
In a letter to the Commandant of POWS in Defense District VII by the commandant of Oflag VII D on 21 May 1941, a request was made to transfer 2nd Lieut. Boustead (5), Prisoner no. 15656, who was caught copying such a map, to Oflag IV-C Colditz.
Single characteristics of letters in name designations indicate that Boustead is the copyist of all maps.’
All men involved were later transferred to Colditz.
TEN BRITISH OFFICERS
Report of 30 June 1941:
‘Of 96 British prisoner officers and 8 enlisted men transferred here from Oflag V-B Biberach, 10 officers escaped on the way. The officers are:
1. 2nd Lieut. Lace, John, pow no. 307
2. 2nd Lieut. Armstrong, Bryan, pow no. 749
3. 2nd Lieut. Gill, Francis Derek, pow no. 1381
4. 2nd Lieut. Yule, James, pow no. 11850
5. 2nd Lieut. Prince, Douglas Raymond, pow no. 909
6. 2nd Lieut. Price, Jan Seorgie, pow no. 1269
7. 2nd Lieut. Lawton, William Tyas, pow no. 1123
8. Lieut. Harrison, Ernest George Peter, pow no. 11854
9. 2nd Lieut. Colt, Robert, pow no. 237
10. Lieut. Mcdonnell, James Angus Grey, pow no. 1050
It is supposed that 1 to 9 escaped from the train between Munich and Mühldorf after departure from Munich around midnight on 28/29 June 1941. No.10 was already missing during a brief halt at Ulm station.
All officers were wearing British uniforms on leaving Biberach. It is not known whether they managed to acquire civilian dress on the way. Their escape route is unknown. It was discovered that the railway carriages were old French ones, 3rd class, which were hardly up to the task. They could not be locked, and it was easy for prisoners to remove boards from the floor of the carriages.’
The first escapee returned to Oflag VII-D was 2nd Lieut. Lawton. Shortly before being taken prisoner in France in May 1940, he had been shot in the lower leg. The wound had healed, but still caused problems. He surrendered himself to two farmers at Hörlkofen, arriving at Castle Tittmoning on the evening of 30 June. The next day, 2nd Lieut. Armstrong returned, having been arrested near
Munich the previous night.
2nd Lieut. Lace surrendered on 5 July, having injured himself during the jump from the train and weakened by not having eaten for nearly a week. It was carefully noted that the Policeman who escorted him to the castle spent 2.90 Reichsmarks on a train ticket, dutifully refunded by the camp clerk.
On 3 July 1941, 2nd Lieut. Mcdonnell was caught trying to cross into Austria and arrested by a border guard. When arriving back at Oflag VII-D on 6 July, he was wearing a green civilian dress which he claimed was an ‘Australian military hospital gown’. His interrogators were not convinced! However, he also carried a map of Stuttgart and Ulm, some Greek Drachmas and 4.20 RM of German currency.
How the escape of 2nd Lieut. Yule and Lieut. ‘Hope’ Harrison came to an end, though, is preserved in a transcript of a telegraph from Herr Kaufmann, head of security at the Alfred Nobel ammunition plant at Kaufering, Landsberg, sent to the commandant of Oflag VII-D:
‘On 9 July 1941, at 1:45 pm, two English officers were arrested at our fence between guard house 4 and 5. They were brought to the main guardroom and brought before me this morning. During my interrogation, I established they were the English Oberleutnants No. 11850 and No.11854. They told me they had escaped the Oflag 10 days ago and were on their way to Switzerland. A body and luggage search was not conducted by me. I reported the two POWS to Stalag Memmingen and both were collected at 14:00 by an Oberfeldwebel and Gefreiter with special identification. The
Feldwebel then conducted a body search in my presence and confiscated two knives. The POWS are now on their way to Oflag VII D accompanied by the Oberfeldwebel and Gefreiter.
Heil Hitler!’
Later interrogation showed the two became lost before arrest in Kaufering. They were still in their British uniforms and had already been arrested on 5 July by two civilians who were alerted by a child. They had been released after claiming to be French POWS returning from work.
2nd Lieutenants Prince, Colt, Price and Gill were brought back to the castle on 11 July. The first three managed to make their way to Munich, where they were identified and arrested at Munich-south station.
Gill managed to reach Pasing, spending three days in hiding and watching goods trains going in and out. He then decided to board one, which took him to Nuremberg where he managed - dressed in British uniform - to cross the city until he reached the road to Augsburg. He was finally caught and arrested by the Danube near Donauwörth.
REPEAT OFFENDER
Lieut. Macdonnell tried to escape again on 30 August, this time with Captain Johnson (No. 581) and Lieut. Keyworth (No. 383).
In the early morning, between midnight and 02:00, while the dog patrol was doing its rounds outside the castle walls,
the three, in homemade civilian clothing, had broken into the commandant’s office (for reasons that could not be determined as all three remained silent about their plans) and were spotted by a sentry (Schütze Heck of Lds.btl. 445).
Two were arrested when they attempted to leave the building into the ornamental garden, but Macdonnell tried to hide in a storage area but was found and arrested. All three were put into confinement in their rooms.
A report noted:
‘It is unavoidable that the escapees must immediately be transferred to Colditz. As already mentioned, the time gap between a transfer request and the transfer permit is too long and used by prisoners to formulate new escape plans, as is shown by the case of Oberleutnant Macdonnell.
It is also clear that after serving their sentence, and before transfer to Colditz, escapees pass experiences on to their comrades, informing them about control weaknesses on the roads etc. There is clear evidence of this in written correspondence and diary notes.’
THE DENTAL APPOINTMENT
At 11.45 on the morning of 21 August, two men came out of the infirmary and walked towards Gefreiter Berger who had not long beforehand taken up his post as Schliesserposten (doorkeeper sentry) inside the courtyard. One of the two men was a ‘French’ POW, the other was his ‘German’ soldier escort.
Berger had been informed that French POWS would be arriving at the castle for dental treatment during the morning, so assumed this to be one of the Frenchman being escorted back to his quarters in the village. That was not unusual. After all, there were dozens of French prisoners working on farms in the area.
The pair walked straight towards Schütze Bauer, the gate guard, who noticed the ‘German’ soldier was holding some paperwork and he told him to drop it off at the guardroom. There, the ‘German’ soldier handed his passport through the window to Gefreiter Eber, deputy guard commander, saying: ‘We’ll be back on Tuesday for another treatment’.
Eber examined the passport and immediately spotted there was something wrong. At the same moment, Lagermeister (senior camp official) Schenke stepped into the passageway from the guard quarters, immediately became suspicious of the pair and went to the guardroom to alert the guard commander, Unteroffizer Waltl. The Unteroffizer was busy shaving while listening to Eber’s suspicions about the passport.
While this was going on, the ‘German’ and his ‘French’ prisoner had walked across the wooden bridge, passing Unteroffizier Gottner, the kitchen NCO, to whom they offered a ‘brisk salute’.
A report states this all took place in under five minutes. Finally, Waltl acted, ordering Gefreiter Baumgartner, who was in the guardroom playing chess with a comrade, to follow the strange pair and return them to the castle. Meanwhile, Waltl headed to the dental surgery, only to be informed that the last French prisoner left the infirmary hours ago.
Baumgartner ran to the village and encountered two dog handlers coming the opposite way, but they had seen nobody. A search of the village square and nearby streets drew no results, either. At the station, Baumgartner encountered two other French POWS guarded by a German soldier, but the men he was searching for had disappeared without trace.
An emergency rollcall revealed that two officers, Captain Walter Southern (No.15653) and Lieut. Henry Emmerson Duff (No.253), were missing. Southern spoke fluent German and had a German wife, while Duff was known to be fluent in French.
Search parties were immediately sent out and regional civilian and military authorities informed. Two days later, a patrol spotted and arrested the pair in Frastanz, Austria, more than 350 km away. It was an enormous distance, covered first by hitching a ride on a train from Rosenheim to Innsbruck and then the express to Bludenz.
Southern dropped his handmade German uniform somewhere along the way, while Duff was still wearing his ‘French uniform’ of knickerbocker trousers made from a brown blanket, a dark shirt, and a khaki jacket.
The only other things found on the pair were a few pieces of chocolate and cheese. The false passport had been handwritten, was full of grammatical and spelling mistakes and the stamp was of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht which would never be seen on a document of that kind. It was not a glorious chapter in the history of the Oflag VII-D guard complement, all things considered.
A more sinister story, though, involves ‘Captain Walter Southern’, about whom we learn more elsewhere in the file:
`It should be noted that Duff, the `Frenchman’, speaks good French, while Southern, `the guard’, as pointed out in earlier communications (letter of 9 January 1941 No.5/41 and returned signed on 15 January 1941, No.10103/42 g) has repeatedly confessed himself to be a supporter of national socialist ideas and has offered to propagate those ideas for the German cause in camps for the rank and file. His present escape attempt does not really contradict that. It is known that his comrades caused him inconvenience for the sentiments he expressed, and as such it may be that this escape attempt was to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the British officers.’
Who, then, was ‘Captain Walter Southern’?
DISLIKE AND SUSPICION
During research for this feature, it was impossible to trace a ‘Captain Walter Southern’. Not only is there no record of him in WO416 records at The National Archive, but his POW number also seems incorrect.
Given that he was fluent in German, had a German wife and expressed sympathetic leanings towards the ideologies of national socialism, it must be considered likely he was an imposter: in other words, inserted to extract information from his ‘fellow prisoners’. Such infiltrators were not unknown, one of the more infamous cases in another camp involved a Swiss-british national, Theodore Wilhelm Schurch.
Serving in the British Army, Schurch gave himself up to Italian troops and subsequently volunteered to work for the Abwehr. Inserted into POW camps, Schurch attempted to extract information from prisoners. Suspicious of his activities, returning POWS alerted MI9 and Schurch was eventually captured, convicted of treason, and hanged in 1946.
Similarly, one former Battle of Britain pilot was allegedly an informant inserted with new prisoners at Dulag-luft, Oberursel. Such cases were not unknown, with motivation ranging from a mercenary desire for privileges to blatant treason and sympathy for the German cause.
Certainly, we know that ‘Captain Walter Southern’ offered his services to his captors, it possibly being that the escape was to rehabilitate trust among other prisoners, as the Germans suspected. There can be no doubt that his misguided espousal of Nazi ideology to prisoners will have done little to endear him to them, and everything to heighten their dislike and suspicion.
It could also be that the breakout was contrived to gather intelligence on escape networks etc. and that the camp’s German staff were unaware, too, of his identity. After all, dissemination of secret information should be on a ‘need to know’ basis. And probably the guards and camp officers did not need to know.
Either way, the mystery of ‘Captain Walter Southern’ endures.
DECKCHAIRS VERBOTEN
On 23 August 1941, at 18:30, Lieut. David Ferguson Ross (No. 1214) was arrested during an escape attempt. Having managed to slip through an unlocked door into the ornamental garden, he was arrested by a sentry.
During the inquiry, it was discovered that three wire gates leading to the garden and wooden patio had been cut, as was one outward wire entanglement covering an ancient section of the walls.
The holes in the wire had been cleverly camouflaged by resetting the cut-out pieces with tiny hand-crafted tin sleeves, making the prepared escape route virtually impossible to spot at a casual glance.
At the ensuing emergency rollcall, it was discovered that Lieut. John Robert Edward Hamilton-baillie (No. 15378) was missing, and four meters below the hole in the wire entanglement the guards discovered the grass had been squashed into the dirt. Someone had jumped down.
A search of the perimeter yielded nothing, and across following days no trace of Hamilton-baillie could be found. In fact, it was even unclear when he had got away:
`According to Sentry 3, the fenced-off walking area was
completely empty at around 17:00. At about 17:30, a number of prisoners entered the fenced-off area, and several occupied the deckchairs, the stool, and two blankets spread out on the ground.
There is good cause to believe that prisoner Hamiltonbaillie cut the wire in the cover of these chairs and escaped, while the second man, prisoner Ross, was waiting for his turn.
The use of deckchairs on the patio has been forbidden.’
Hamilton-baillie was recaptured on 4 September 1941 in Schalkl, Tyrol, near Kajetan Bridge, having walked nearly 300 km in 10 days - 30 km each night and hiding during the day. He had only been a stones-throw from the Swiss border. Unfortunately for Hamilton-baillie, he had believed he was already in Switzerland but the map he used failed to show some subsequent changes to the line of the German-swiss border.
An Unteroffizer and a Gefreiter set out by car from Tittmoning, returning with the prisoner on 7 September. The escape from Tittmoning Castle was not his first, and neither would it be his last. In total, ‘Jock’ Hamilton-baillie would escape, or attempt to escape, numerous times and is rightly known as one of the leading ‘escape artists’ of the war.
PRISONER HANNAY’S ADVENTURES
Report of 30 August 1941:
‘The officer of the day watch, Feldwebel Schweikhart, during the night of 27/28 August 1941, discovered an opening in the ceiling of Room 13, third floor, Building 198. On closer inspection, it became clear this was an old shaft which had once made it possible to winch goods into the attic. It had been nailed shut but had been opened by the prisoners.
The attic above the room in which the imprisoned officers are quartered serves as a storage for blankets, bedding and cupboards of the hostel which once operated in the castle. During a search, one cupboard was found to contain civilian clothing made from blankets, a rucksack with chocolates, raisins and two homemade hats. A towel and blanket are marked with the number of prisoner 2/Ltn. Hannay, Nr. 15448.
Hannay admits the items are his but denies any knowledge as to how they got there. The senior officer in room 13/III, Captain Taylor, claims not to have seen anyone in his room entering the attic.’
Possibly triggered by this discovery, 2nd Lieut. Edmund Hannay* (Nr. 15448) launched a quite desperate escape attempt the following day:
‘…by letting himself be driven out of the castle grounds on the rubbish cart. Once outside, as ordered, the cart was prodded with an iron rod and the prisoner was discovered and arrested.
He was equipped with 5 pounds of chocolate, 2.5 pounds of cheese, 2 pounds of sugar, 2-3 pounds of almonds, raisins and nuts. He was wearing shorts, a shirt and a pullover. After his arrest, he attempted to throw the already known and mostly hectographed map material to his comrades. A homemade compass of the type encountered during the search of 17 May was also found in his possession.’
A sad footnote to this episode is that Hannay subsequently began to act very strangely in the camps and was diagnosed as mentally ill. As a result, he was repatriated to Britain.
THE ‘GERMAN OFFICER’
Report of 16 September 1941
‘Around 10:15 (following the morning rollcall of the
prisoners), the British officer 2nd Lieutenant Clarkson, No. 1279, conducted an escape attempt.
Disguised as a German officer, he walked past the guard. He was wearing self-tailored grey trousers and a blueish jacket, fashioned from a blanket. Above that he was wearing a raincoat fashioned from oilcloth and dyed black with ink. On his head he wore a visor cap made from a modified English military cap. National insignia and oak leaf wreath were carved from wood and covered with tinfoil, while the silver braid is made of thread dyed white. The whole gear is skillfully made and cunning copied.
In this disguise, he passed the sentry of the guard. Oberzahlmeister Schwörer watched the alleged officer come out of the commandant’s office and walk past the guard in the direction of the town. He became suspicious, asking the guard commander, Uffz. Walchhäusel, if this officer had a passport and if someone had seen him before.
He answered both questions negatively and called twice after the escapee, who was about 30 meters away and kept on walking. The guard commander then ran after him and asked to see the passport. The escapee then asked the guard commander what he wanted from him.
The escapee was brought back to the guard house. When being searched it was discovered the escapee had two leather briefcases under his raincoat. These contained some underwear and food (chocolate, sugar, cheese, raisins, biscuits). He also carried: 1 homemade compass, 9 maps (hectographed), 10 Reichsmarks and a forged passport. It must be added that the escapee speaks fluent German.’
HIDE AND SEEK
On 11 October 1941, all prisoners of Oflag VII-D were transferred to Oflag VI-B; Tittmoning Castle Oflag was being disbanded to become an internment camp (Internierungslager) and as a sub-camp of Ilag VII, it was designated Ilag VII/Z.
The transfer was conducted as planned, but not all prisoners wanted to move!
To the Abwehr office of Defence District VII Munich, 13 October 1941:
‘On 10 October 1941 at 19:45, two prisoners disguised with cloaks and what seemed to be steel helmets, appeared in front of Sentry 5 on the western exit of the camp at the inner barbed wire door with a pocket light and shouted: ‘Open up! Alarm!’. Sentry 5 then went to the telephone, alarmed the guard and wanted to arrest the two prisoners. However, they had hastily fled into building 200 during which they dropped a packet of cake on the courtyard. On the same evening, at rollcall, the commander of the day watch, Schütze Müller, noticed that six English officers were missing. Dog patrols were immediately sent out, the area around the castle searched, the company alarmed, and police informed.
Following that, another rollcall was held in the courtyard, while all accomodation rooms, attics and cellars were thoroughly searched. Missing were: Hauptmann Campbellpreston, No.1225, Oberleutnant Clement Elson, No.28, Hauptmann Martin Gilliat, No.1224, Hauptmann Greenwell, No.562, Hauptmann Earl of Hopetoun, No. 1599 and
Oberleutnant Michael Scott, No. 360. The barbed wire of the camp fencing was thoroughly examined and found undamaged. Equally, no tunnels or digging work was found.
During the night of 11 October, at 21:30, Sentry 4 reported light signals in the wall walk. At once, the commander of the guard, with two dog handlers and four men, went to the wall walk where it was discovered the barbed wire of an inner floor window had been cut and a door opened.
Following that, another search of all rooms, cupboards, attics, roofs and cellars was conducted without finding any trace of the six prisoners. The commander of the guard however, together with one of the dog handlers stayed in hiding in the wall walk.
At 03.00 on 12 October, he heard someone whispering in English in a room below the wall walk. The building below was searched, and on the upper floor, in room 200/23c, two prisoners were discovered and arrested. They were
(6) British officers Hauptmann Earl of Hopetoun (1599) and Hauptmann Martin Gilliat (1224). They were dressed in civilian clothing, homemade from blankets. Nothing else was found on them. When interrogated, they claimed not to know of the whereabouts of the other four prisoners.
During the night of 12/13 October, between 23.00 to 03.00, listening posts were placed on the wall walk and inside building 200, but no sounds were heard, and the four prisoners were not found.
The four British officers and 10 men still inside the camp to help with clearing up work had their Red Cross parcels taken away and food only distributed directly, on a day-today basis. They had been informed of the escape, and even had the luggage of the six missing men in their care. This was to stop them from supplying the four missing prisoners with food.
To the Abwehr office of Defence District VII Munich, 17 October 1941:
‘After not having found a trace in four nights, and no sounds heard, Oberleutnant Meier of the guard company, who had just returned from the transport to Dössel, on 16 October, at 03.00, found a sawed-out hole under a bed in Room 23b of Building 200. It measured 40 x 30 cm and was located on the floor, next to the bricked-up fireplace there.
Knocking signals were answered from within, and after the fireplace had been opened-up, Hauptmann Campbellpreston (no. 1225) appeared. When questioned, he replied that he had been in the fireplace on his own, waiting for an opportunity to escape once the guards had gone.
The fireplace was then thoroughly searched, and a large number of items found (listed in attachment). It had never been used, had wooden floorboards and there were shelves on the walls, as well as a bucket on the floor for excrement. This could be winched up into the chimney.
The prisoner then pointed to a place in the ceiling of the communal room from which a board of about 1 metre length had been removed with a saw, but which could not be spotted from above or below. In this manner, the prisoners could easily access the attic.
The prisoner refused testimony about the German field tunic, pocket lamp battery, stearin candles and other items found with him. Like the other two prisoners he will be disciplined with 10 days arrest and then brought to Oflag VI-D, Dössel. The search for the three other prisoners continues…’
To the Abwehr office of Defence District VII Munich, 20 October 1941:
‘As reported via telephone, the three missing prisoners were found on 18 October, at 10:30, on the first floor of Building 199 (in a fireplace next to the orderly quarters) by Oberleutnant Meier.
The fireplace, which had once seemingly been used as a smoking chamber, had been bricked-up in March 1941 after a shaft had been dug from it. This bricked-up opening had been torn open and the three officers Oberleutnant Clement Elson, Nr. 28, Hauptmann Greenwell, Nr. 562 and Oberleutnant Michael Scott, Nr. 360, were discovered. They spent 8 days and 7 nights in this smoke chamber and were in a severely squalid state.
They had planned, once the camp was vacated, to conduct an escape to Switzerland for which they had collected enough supplies for four weeks. They used the opening in the floor of the attic of Building 200, as described on the 17th, to reach the attic from where they climbed through a window into the wall walk. There, they removed several bricks and slipped into the smoke chamber through the chimney.’
(1) On 25 May 1940, during the withdrawal to Dunkirk, Elson was serving with 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment (2 RNR) and was in command of a carrier platoon. His battalion was holding a line on La Bassée Canal when his carriers were hit by anti-tank rounds. Both his driver and batman were killed, his carrier set ablaze. Elson was hit in the leg and shoulder. Later that night, a German patrol found him unconscious and took him prisoner.
The next day, other members of his battalion were in a defensive position at a farmhouse, running low on ammunition and with many injured. Under heavy shelling, they surrendered to a company of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of the SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Division. They were subsequently massacred at Le Paradis. Due to many escape attempts, Elson was later transferred to Colditz.
(2) Lord Campbell of Alloway (24 May 1917 – 30 June 2013) was a British judge, barrister and author who sat in the House of Lords as a life peer. He was also ‘The Lawyer of Colditz’ who successfully defended many Allied soldiers in German courts.
(3) Colin Dalziel Mackenzie was born on 23 March 1919, the elder son of King George V’s factor, spending much of his childhood at Balmoral. He became Page of Honour to King George VI. After education at Eton and Sandhurst he was commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders.
Major Colin Mackenzie of Farr, MBE, MC, DL, was awarded the MC when with the 2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders in France,1940. When the Germans attacked on 10 May 1940, the Seaforths were in the 51st Highland Division.
Mackenzie won his MC commanding a forward patrol which ran into a larger German force which pinned them down with machine gun fire. In company with Pte Mclaughlan, Mackenzie extricated the platoon by moving to one side and showing himself to the enemy while shouting orders to mislead his opponents. When he was certain the platoon was out of danger he withdrew, bringing in a wounded soldier.
He was made an MBE for sending out valuable information in coded form to the Allies.
(4) Alan Lindsay Orr Ewing, MC, PH.D,RPF, attended Eton College 1925 – 1930 and earned his MC in France during May 1940. He was captured during the ‘Dunkirk period’ and was Mentioned in Despatches for sending home coded messages to his father from Oflag IV-C, Colditz. He died in 1996, aged 81, having become a forestry genetecist in Canada after the war.
(5) John Rowland Boustead.
*Note: Hannay is another of several prisoners at Oflag VII D who can be identified as an Old Etonian.
(6) Charles, 9th Earl and 3rd Marquess (1912-1987) served in the Second World War, winning a Military Cross, and was taken prisoner with the 51st (Highland) Division in 1940 before being held at Colditz as one of the ‘Prominente’. He was a partner in Joseph Sebag, the London stockbrokers, and a director of Eagle Star Insurance.