Great Escapes (23 page)

On Monday 27 May, James Langley formed up his platoon and together with the rest of the 1st Battalion marched back toward Dunkirk. Fortunately the weather closed in around them and the low cloud prevented Messerschmitt fighters and Stuka dive bombers from making attacking runs on the column of soldiers as they marched back along the main road to Lille. The road became increasingly clogged with retreating soldiers and their vehicles, so much so in fact, that at one point the entire column was at a standstill.

No. 15 platoon was ordered to form the rear-guard action when they reached Dunkirk and they settled down to watch the slow, but relentless, German advance. With the weather becoming settled, the soldiers on the beaches watched a handful of allied aircraft fighting off the German bombers and fighters as the enemy attempted to bomb and strafe the packed beaches. Slowly but surely the beleaguered troops were taken off the beaches by a flotilla of small boats that had plodded their way across the English Channel.

As James Langley and his platoon watched the German advance, they were astonished at the casual and arrogant way the enemy was advancing. A group of Germans were spotted in a cornfield casually walking towards them. Guns were brought quickly to bear on them and opened fire. It was over in seconds and as the dust cleared there was no movement left at all.

The following morning the platoon watched as the Germans suddenly appeared with what appeared to be an anti-tank gun on wheels. They opened up on the British positions and scored direct hits on the house that was being used as an observation platform. Later German big guns opened up, and then one of the shells landed on the roof of the platoon’s headquarters and exploded. That was the last thing James Langley remembered. When he came to he felt no pain, but his battle-dress was covered in blood, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. He was placed on a stretcher and taken to a casualty clearing station that had been set up in the ‘Chateau Rouge’, a large country house on the outskirts of Dunkirk.

The next few days were nothing more than a haze for James Langley, that was until shells started to rain down on the field hospital. The damage was considerable and Langley lay amongst the rubble until pulled clear by an orderly who told him the Germans were at the gates.

The Germans occupied the chateau, and treated the wounded men there with respect. Ten days later they decided that the wounded should be taken to properly-equipped hospitals, now under German control. James Langley was taken to a hospital at Zuydcoote and placed in a ward with both British and French wounded. A British army surgeon visited him, undid the bandages around his injured arm and examined it closely. The look on his face said it all – the arm would have to come off. Gangrene had set in.

James Langley woke up some hours later to the news that France had fallen to the Germans. Two days later, he and a number of other British soldiers were shipped off to a former French army barracks at Lille. Among the soldiers was another British officer, Major Oswald Phipps (Lord Normanby) of the Green Howards Regiment. At Lille the Germans treated the two British officers like criminals, and at meal times made them go to the end of the queue for food, all of which was inevitably gone by the time they got there. The French sergeant in charge of the kitchens told them that he had been ordered by the Germans to serve French white soldiers, Goums, any other coloured troops, other British ranks and last of all British officers, in that order. With only water to drink, no food and non-existent sanitary conditions, things looked bad. After a few days, Major Phipps, whom Langley had befriended, suddenly erupted and subjected the German guards to a tirade of abuse – in fluent German. It appeared that Major Oswald Phipps had lived in Germany for some time when his uncle had been the British Ambassador there and had learned to speak the language fluently.

Such was the verbal ferocity of his attack that the guards sent for the Commandant. In less than an hour the two British officers were on their way to a French convent near Roubaix, which had been turned into a temporary prison hospital for French naval officers. The two officers initially welcomed the move, but on arriving at the convent, although greeted warmly by the nuns, news came through about the incident at Mers el Kebir in Algeria. This had arisen when the Royal Navy had sunk, or damaged beyond repair, half the French fleet with the loss of 1,300 French sailors, to prevent the fleet falling into German hands. To say that the atmosphere became hostile was the understatement of the year. Both the British officers feared for their safety, but the senior French naval officer stepped in and warned the other French officers that the two British officers were to be treated with respect, or answer to him. For the following week, until they were moved again, they were treated courteously.

The Germans turned up at the convent one week later and the two British officers were taken to the
Faculté Catholique
of Lille University, which had been turned into an assessment centre for British wounded. It was here that German doctors decided whether or not the wounded were fit to be sent to prison camps in Germany, or bad enough to be repatriated back to England via Switzerland.

The assessments were carried out every three weeks and the wounded went to great lengths to exaggerate their disabilities. But the Germans were not easily fooled. On one occasion, when an army captain maintained that he could not lift his right arm above his head due to a bullet wound in his shoulder, the German doctor suddenly pulled a large bar of chocolate from his pocket and said that the first person to catch the chocolate with his right hand could keep it. The captain, unable to resist the thought of the chocolate, instinctively reached up and caught the bar as it sailed over his head. The German doctor laughed, pointed at the captain and said, ‘Germany – and you can keep the chocolate’.

When James Langley came to be assessed the German doctor told him that for him the war was over, and that he was to be sent to Switzerland as soon as it could be arranged. Life in the hospital at
Faculté Catholique
was half-prison, half-hospital, with a certain amount of freedom allowed. A number of incidents occurred during the following weeks, but one was particularly serious and was to have a profound effect on him. Some of the French women from the nearby town would throw small food parcels over the wall for the prisoners and had been warned on a number of occasions not to do so. James Langley remembered with horror and disgust the moment when he was talking to an English-speaking German officer and rapid gunfire suddenly erupted. The German guards had repeatedly lost their temper with the French women, who chose to ignore the warnings, and opened fire, killing a number of them and wounding many others.

The German officer regarded the incident as relatively trivial, his argument was that they were at war and anyone who helped their enemy would be killed. James Langley looked at the German officer with contempt, turned on his heels and walked away. The officer could not understand why such a trivial incident should cause Langley to react in such a way.

As the numbers of wounded prisoners dwindled, the food parcels, which up to now had been ‘pooled’, were now being given out individually. Also a number of the more seriously wounded were ‘adopted’ by what became known as ‘War Godmothers’. These were local French women who sent food and other necessary items to the prisoners in an effort to help ease their position. Madame Caron, who was one of the cleaners on the wards and the wife of the local
gendarme,
‘adopted’ James Langley. Her husband regarded his wife’s support for the British with scepticism, and with some trepidation, knowing the German’s attitude to fraternisation with the enemy. Every evening she would arrive with a cooked meal for him, and as James Langley remembers, she never failed to provide him with good substantial food for the whole time he was at the hospital.

Then on 30 September word came down that the Germans were going to move
all
the prisoners to Enghien, Belgium, and from there to Germany. As his health improved and he got stronger, James Langley looked towards planning his escape. He had decided that when he did he would do it alone, as he would travel faster by himself without having to worry about a companion. The concern was which route to take. The Germans controlled the countries from Norway to the Pyrenees, with the exception of Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal, all of which were neutral. The closest British soil that could be reached without crossing the sea was Gibraltar and that was over 1,000 miles away. To get there he would have to travel through 500 miles of hostile territory into Spain and 500 miles through Spain to Gibraltar. Although Spain was deemed to be neutral, General Franco, who had taken over the country just prior to the war, had done so with the help of Germany. So there were very strong pro-German sympathies within Spain’s government, but within the Basque population many anti-Franco factions. It was these factions that were instrumental in helping to run the escape routes through Spain itself.

Langley approached Madame Caron and told her of his plan to escape, asking if she could hide him for a few days. She refused, saying that her husband would not agree to this, but she would find a safe house for him, which she duly did. James Langley started to make preparations for his escape. That same evening two British officers escaped and Langley realised that if he was to go he had to go the next day whilst there was a state of confusion. Madame Caron produced the address of a safe house, a password that would ensure his safety when he reached it and a map of Lille.

He had already found the safest point from which to leave, and that was a porter’s lodge used as a guardhouse during the day, but for some unknown reason was left empty at night. Langley collected his bits and pieces together; £30 in French francs, a small torch, twenty cigarettes in his silver cigarette case, a box of matches and couple of dirty handkerchiefs. An RAMC corporal agreed to help him. He spoke fluent French and often used to slip into town for a drink and a liaison with a French girl via the porter’s lodge. The corporal also provided some additional bandages for Langley’s stump, which was still in the process of healing.

That night Langley, making use of the shadows, slipped out of his room and entered the porter’s lodge where the corporal was waiting. The German guards were chatting up some of the local French girls and were oblivious to what was going on. Langley climbed up onto the windowsill with the help of the corporal, clambered through the window and dropped the 12ft onto the ground. After making sure that no one had heard him, Langley examined his map of the town and headed towards it. He had memorised the map and the position of the safe house. On reaching the town he found the house and knocked on the door, three knocks, a ten-second pause followed by two more knocks.

The door was opened partially by a young lady who took his hand and pulled him inside. He was led into a room where a short elderly man, his wife and another young girl were seated. They smiled and welcomed him with a glass of wine, followed by a delicious omelette. They told him that two other officers had been there the night before and were now on their way with the help of the Resistance. Because there was a great deal of German activity in the town, and a number of houses had been searched, arrangements had been made for him to sleep in the upstairs part of a bombed-out house next door.

The next morning another young woman arrived carrying a bundle of clothes, all of which had seen better days. The main bulk of the clothes consisted of a shoddy black suit, which smelt strongly of cheese. The girl took him through Lille where they boarded a tram and then on to the village of Ascq, where she left him after giving him the address of another safe house. This turned out to be the home of the village priest, whose main worry was that the Luftwaffe band were billeted in the village and a large number of them were Roman Catholics. Consequently they all turned up regularly for mass in his church.

After several days in the village, James Langley was returned to Lille where he was once again taken to a safe house, this time on the outskirts of the town. Madame Samiez, who owned the house, hated the Germans with a vengeance. It was said that whenever she went out shopping she always carried at least four German stick grenades hanging from her undergarments, which were covered by a voluminous skirt, and she had two Mills bombs in her shopping basket. It was also said that on more than one occasion she had dropped hand-grenades over railway bridges onto German trains. She made no secret of her dislike for the Germans and was extremely vociferous on occasions. The problem with staying with such a person was that it heightened the risk of being discovered, as the Germans had made many searches of her house. Somehow she managed to stay one step ahead and during the war hid many allied soldiers and airmen.

Two days later a middle-aged man arrived to collect him and put him on a train to Paris. On the train he was introduced to a man called Georges, who was to be his guide, and two more escapees, both very large Scotsmen. The rule at the time was that civilians were not allowed on the train until all the Germans had embarked and were seated. The train was packed and James Langley had to stand until it reached Amiens where, fortunately, the majority of the Germans got off. On reaching Paris, Georges took the three men via the Metro, to a safe hotel on the Left Bank. What became apparent, was that almost all the couriers who guided the evaders and escapees never revealed their names and remained ‘faceless’ people throughout the war.

Their guide told them that the ‘Old Comrades Association of the 1914-1918 War’ would handle their escape, and they were to go to their offices and make contact. The three men duly made their way to the offices, only to find them shut down by the
‘Geheime Staatspolizie’
(Gestapo). On the door was a sign that said that any information regarding the association was to be made at the Commandant’s office of the local
gendarmerie.
They made their way to his office and explained their position. The Commandant told them in no uncertain manner that he was not prepared to help them in any way and if they did not leave his office right away he would call the Germans and hand them over.