INTESTINAL
G.I.s flee Nazi prison through sewer
THE STENCH of human waste emanating from the communal latrine was overpowering, but not enough to deter the 36 men hellbent on escape.
Bill Ash lowered himself through the toilet and splashed in the urine and feces held in the concrete sump below.
Ahead of the scrawny 27-year-old lay a 150-foot-long tunnel, barely 2 feet across, that led to a potato patch — and freedom.
Ash, a Texas-born fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, and a 21-year old from Quebec named Eddy Asselin were among the Allied pilots and soldiers being held captive at a German prisoner-of-war camp near Schubin in northern Poland, known as Stalag XXI-B, in 1943. And they were determined to get out.
The story of the greatest, and one of the most disgusting, escapes of World War II, long held in secrecy, has finally emerged in a gripping new book.
“The Big Break: The Greatest American WWII POW Escape Story Never Told,” by Stephen Dando-Collins, unearths the incredible tale of the brave and ingenious 250 American POWs who threw off the clutches of the German army while on the march in 1945.
The previously untold story follows POWs including General Dwight Eisenhower’s aide-de-camp, Ernest Hemingway’s eldest son and General George Patton’s son-in-law in their death-defying fight for survival.
Dando-Collins tells the tale of cunning and determined soldiers, along with the Poles who aided their efforts, beginning the journey two years earlier with Ash and Asselin’s descent underground into the bowels of a bathroom — below the Nazis noses.
The tunnel was codenamed “Asselin,” after the Canadian, because he thought up the stomach-turning, though ingenious, escape bid.
Some fellow escapees had other names for the plan, including “Eddy’s Exit,” and the “SHJ” (“S--- House Job”), according to Dando-Collins.
His co-conspirator, Ash, was one the great escape artists of World War II. In three years, he made 13 attempts to outwit his German captors.
Known as the “cooler king,” Ash was thrown into solitary confinement over and over again for his escapes and his general defiance.
He went over wire-topped fences, disguised himself as a Russian laborer, and tunnelled his way out of several camps. His exploits were said to be the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s character in Maludzinska, went to extraordinary “The Great Escape.” lengths to obtain forged
The laborious escape plan had documents for the escapees. Afterward, teams assigned to various tasks, including she spent the war hiding digging, watching for from Nazi reprisal. cave-ins, extending the air pipe, On a cold and miserable March and the “unenviable” job of hiding day in 1943, 36 men took the the evidence in a “lake of urine plunge and got away. and feces,” pumped out once a A week later, all were recaptured. week for a local farmer’s fertilizer. As punishment, Ash and
Weeks went into carving out others were sent to another camp, the 2-foot-by-2-foot tunnel, in Silesia, along with Capt. Harry where diggers had to lower themselves Day, the mastermind of ultimately through a toilet, then wade ill-fated Great Escape. through excrement awash in But the audacious attempt set urine, to carry out construction. the tone for what truly became the
A brave Polish teenager, Stefania greatest escape of WWII.
That same year, Stalag XXI-B became the only German POW camp dedicated to American officers.
It was renamed Oflag 64 and security was daunting.
Hidden in the midst of the POWs were several men who had special reason to fear discovery.
Lt. Craig Campbell had been Eisenhower’s personal aide. He knew secrets the Germans would be determined to torture out of him.
Maj. Jerry Sage, another serial escapee, was actually a secret agent with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA. He was a lethal weapon, trained to kill with his hands. His nickname was “Dagger.”
Lt. John (Jack) Hemingway, the famed novelist’s son, clung to the guise of an infantry soldier when, in fact, he was another OSS operative.
Meanwhile, Lt. Col. John Knight Waters enjoyed a certain celebrity in camp — as Patton’s son-in-law.
Later, that relationship resulted in a disastrous mission.
On Jan. 21, 1945, more than 1,400 American POWs were lined up outside Oflag 64, to start down the long, harrowing road of evacuation under Nazi guard.
The forced march made the escape of a record number of POWs possible.
The Schubin column, as it was known, departed camp leaving 100 prisoners in the hospital awaiting the Soviet advance and anticipated rescue from Allied forces.
The march had only just begun, when one soldier peeled away and sneaked into the hospital.
“It was game on!” Dando-Collins writes. “The greatest POW es