Colditz (6 page)

The eight British newcomers who arrived before Christmas were: two Anglican Army chaplains, Padres Heard (Dean of Peterhouse College, Cambridge) and Hobling; one Methodist chaplain, Padre Ellison Platt; Lieutenant-Colonel Guy German of the Royal Leicestershire Regiment; Lieutenants Peter Storie-Pugh of the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment, Teddy Barton of the Royal Army Service Corps, Tommy Elliot of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, and Geoffrey Wardle of the Royal Navy. Lieutenant-Colonel Guy Johnson German, a territorial army officer educated at Rugby School, was the Senior British Officer in Colditz for a long time. He was familiarly called “the SBO.” A handsome, young-looking colonel (he was thirty-eight in 1940), he was broad-shouldered, tall, well built, with bright blue eyes. His nature was very down to earth and good-tempered, but he was quick in decision. This quality probably accounted for the fact that in spite of his size he played scrum-half for Oxford University, playing at Twickenham against Cambridge in 1923. He brooked no nonsense and was feared by the Germans.

His father had founded the firm of estate agents known as John German and Sons. Guy had studied farming seriously as well as country estate and property management. Much of his peace-time activity was that of farming consultancy. His firm provided an advisory service to farmers and landowners up and down the country. Along with several others, I started a course in agriculture under his direction and tuition which continued for a year. Guy had taken part in the Norwegian campaign, sailing from Rosyth in HMS
Devonshire
under Captain Mansfield on 17 April 1940. He fought a rearguard action at Tetten. His battalion was saved, returning to Glasgow on HMS
Rodney
in May, but he himself was captured on 23 April. Imprisoned at Spangenburg, he publicly burnt all the copies of an issue of a German magazine for POWs—as “dangerous propaganda.” That sent him to Colditz.

A remarkable
rencontre
had taken place when Padre Platt stood with others before the gate into the prisoners' courtyard on his arrival at the Castle. A German officer approached out of the darkness. It was Eggers.

“Good evening, my English friends!”

The POW group (six of them) came to attention and saluted. Eggers waved their stiff approach aside.

“You must be tired after so long a day…. You will sleep well tonight…. Oh, by the way, which is the Methodist chaplain?”

Padre Platt stepped forward. Eggers with an engaging smile said:

“A very personal friend of mine is a Methodist minister. He stayed in my home when he studied in Germany. Do you happen to know Rev. Connell?”

Dick Connell and Jock Platt had been at college together and played on the same football team. There was an immediate friendly exchange of experiences between the German and the Englishman. Platt confirms that it softened the hard edges of the Castle's walls as he passed through “the needle's eye” of the gate into the penumbra of the courtyard.

Padre Joseph Ellison Platt was born in 1900 and educated at a local grammar school in Winsford, a small town in Cheshire. His father was a Methodist preacher. When Jock was about twenty-five, he entered Hartley College, Manchester, to train for the Methodist ministry. Here he met Dick Connell. On 29 May 1940 Platt found himself at the 10th Casualty Clearing Station in Kzombeke, a Belgian village, in the no-man's-land between the advancing Germans and Dunkirk only a short distance away.

Nine hundred wounded men lay head to foot in the village church. The doctors were working round the clock and Platt found himself performing the task of anesthetist. He was taken prisoner with the rest of them. He found himself eventually at
Oflag
IXA—at Spangenburg. He was accused of having brought into the camp from
Stalag
IXA “a housebreaking instrument—a jimmy—for escape purposes.” Actually it was a piece of wire he used for propping up the lid of his battered suitcase. This was enough to send him to Colditz! Well built, of medium height, he possessed stern features, carried a mustache and wore hornrimmed spectacles. Though only forty years old, his hair was already graying and he was regarded as an “elder.”

Over Christmas the Poles entertained the British with a marionette show of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They had received a few food parcels from their homes in Poland. The British were overwhelmed by their hospitality. We only had German prison rations until on Boxing Day fifteen Red Cross parcels arrived! The excitement had to be seen to be believed. They were bulk parcels; that is to say they were not addressed individually, nor did each parcel contain an assortment of food. There were parcels of tinned meat, of tea, of cocoa, and so on. Apart from a bulk consignment which reached Laufen the previous August, these were the first parcels of food from England and we British felt a surge of gratitude for this gift, without which our New Year would have been a pathetic affair. We were also able to return, at least to a limited extent, the hospitality of the Poles. We had to ration severely for we could not count on a regular supply, and we made this first consignment, together with thirteen
parcels which arrived early in January (which we could have eaten in a few days) last for two months.

Padre Platt's unpublished diary, written at the time, describes the end of 1940 in Colditz:

New Year's Day 1941

The New Year's party was a roaring success. An extension of lights until 12.30 a.m. made a real new year's scene possible. Our hosts (the Poles) were in great form. A special allowance of beer had already “lighted up” one or two of the younger officers. Song and laughter greeted us as we were conducted to the central table as guests of honor. It was a perfect Beggars' Opera, for we were the most ragged and out-at-elbows people in the room.

A few days later he noted his impressions of life in the Castle:

Saturday 11 January

If this is a
Strafe
[punishment] camp—as it is—my chief regret is that I was not strafed from the first date of capture. During my period of detention in Germany I have had nothing that is better and much that is worse than
Oflag
IVC.

The ways in which IVC is superior to any of the other camps in which I have been detained are, in order of importance:

(a) The British community itself! We are few in number, but apart from the chaplains who are three quite ordinary fellows, the fighting officers are of the best British type. They would not have been in this camp [were they not] of bolder spirit and larger initiative than their fellows in other camps. An escaper is always in danger of being shot like a rabbit, and I think the German authorities—who would be proud enough of any of their officers who had made an escape—honor these fellows for their daring and their refusal to be nice comfortable prisoners who give no trouble.

In all other officers' camps that I know, certain elite sets have segregated themselves and have lived in indigent, but pompous, isolation…. There is no hint of that in this camp. We are seventeen officers in number. No two are alike except in good comradeship. Some of England's number one group of public schools are represented; while some of the RAF officers would make no wider claim than an intense willingness to serve their country. My present judgement is that there are none who regard
themselves as being of different clay from the rest. Regulars, Territorials, Emergency Reserve, etc., take each other for what they are worth; and it seems to me that their worth as men and soldiers is pretty high.

(b) We have been mercifully preserved from the presence of that arch-tormentor of prisoners of war, the organizing genius….

(c) The Poles and the French are excellent fellows. They are all of the difficult-prisoner type. But difficult prisoners make interesting prison companions. There is always something going on—planning escapes, or putting plans in process of execution; swapping war stories. So, though monotony is almost inescapable in these conditions, it is by no means as prevalent as in non-difficult-prisoner camps.

(d) The final reason, and a very cogent one, is the attitude of the
Lager
authorities. By and large, they are the best type of German officers I have met since the 10th CCS [Casualty Clearing Station] was overhauled by their front-line troops. To maintain discipline, they do not resort to a weak man's refuge—petty tyranny—but treat us, after they have taken every precaution to prevent escapes, as gentlemen who know the meaning of honor and possess a gentleman's dignity.

Lieutenant-Colonel Schmidt, the
Kommandant
, and Major Menz, the second-in-command (who went to school in Eastbourne in his boyhood), strike me as being desirous of doing nothing that even an enemy prisoner could regard as unfair. When either of them comes into the
Hof
[courtyard] or our quarters, and one of the accompanying German officers gives the command “
Achtung
,” they scarcely wait for us to make the initial effort to rise before waving us back to whatever pursuits we were following. Needless to say, we are more meticulous in their presence about military etiquette than would otherwise be the case.

Apart from the Red Cross parcels, there was little respite from the dreary food provided for us by the Germans. Padre Platt's diary reveals one ruse for relieving the monotony:

Monday 27 January

Dick Howe is receiving extensive Californian sympathy mail these days. He wrote to Ginger Rogers' Hollywood address in July, at a time when letters could not be sent to England. Miss Rogers herself has not replied, but her publicity agent made front page news of the letter in the Los Angeles
Observer
.

A largish number of aspirant stars saw the notice, and at once wrote to Dick furnishing details about their height, weight, figure, color of eyes and hair (monotonously blue and blonde) and stating their fixed preference for this, that, and the other. “Please don't think me fast or husband-seeking because of this letter. I am a career woman (age 17) and have told Mum and Dad a score of times that I shall never, never marry”—and so they all end! In nine letters out of ten a pretty photograph of the “career woman” is enclosed, showing her in a devastatingly attractive bathing costume, or in trousers and silk shirt. We hope for lots more. Their entertainment value is high indeed.

However, from a practical point of view the whole thing is a wet squib! The original letter was one of many written by officers to people they thought might be good for a monthly food and tobacco parcel. Of course the ulterior motive was not openly avowed in the letter but there were some who received letters who thought at once of a parcel. Dick drew a blank. Letters, yes, parcels nary-a-one! Still, the letters are of unspeakable value; they give our forcing-house of humor a much appreciated zest.

At the end of February 1941, 200 French officers arrived under the leadership of General Le Bleu, who hated all things
Boche
. One of them, General Le Brigant, in his book
Les Indomptables
describes their arrival (my translation):

Carrying their personal possessions, surrounded by armed guards with bayonets fixed, the future guests of the
Schloss
cross the town and the stone bridge over the Mulde river, painfully climb the steep narrow alleyways, and arrive at last at a postern gate situated between two deep moats. The papers handed over by the accompanying guards are carefully examined. A telephone call is made to obtain permission to open the main entrance doors…. A German officer approaches, a cloak over his shoulders. He welcomes the new recruits with an artificially friendly smile. He says “Welcome to the Escaping Academy! But from here there is no escaping!”

A face appears behind the bars of a high-up window. A voice calls out “Are you prisoners? So am I. But what's the time? We no longer know anything in this place!” Threatened by a guard, the face vanishes. A
Feldwebel
turns an enormous key in the massive oak, iron-bound door which gives access to the interior of the
Schloss
….

The newcomers are ready to sleep after their heavy day, but an urgent voice from the other side of the door tells them to look out at midnight.
Sharp on midnight (when the change of guard was taking place) strings appear outside the window to which, item by item, they tie their contraband. Compasses, German money, maps, and a few items of civilian clothing. They are pulled up to the next floor. The new arrivals begin to feel a little less despairing.

Not all the new French officers were escapers by any means, but about a hundred of them were. Among the remainder were a number of French Jewish officers who were separated from the rest by the Germans and given their own quarters on the top floor of the Castle.

The
Kommandant
of Colditz carried sole responsibility for the inmates of Colditz. Oberstleutnant Schmidt had been carefully selected by the OKW because of the peculiar nature of the post: the safe-keeping of rebellious, intransigent,
Deutschfeindlich
prisoners. (
Deutschfeindlich
—meaning “enemy of Germany”—was an annotation appended along with a red seal to the records of a majority of the prisoners in Colditz.) He was empowered to use whatever means he considered necessary to ensure control over the prisoners.

Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, the detaining power is permitted to create “special” camps for the control of “escapers” and “offenders” provided the principles of the Convention are not contravened. In practice, this involved more roll-calls, more searches, more sentries, less exercise space, less privacy, less privileges, no parole.

Schmidt was an officer of the old school. Despite his rigid outlook and approach to his job, he retained the concept of chivalry in which he had been brought up. He tolerated no slackness in his staff and dealt severely with offenders. He ensured that so much was
verboten
in the prison regulations that he found little difficulty in discovering misdemeanors when he wished to. He accepted the right of officer POWs to attempt to escape and he did his best to comply with the rules of the Geneva Convention. But orders from Berlin often overruled its terms, and it was these OKW orders which he had to obey.