When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain (20 page)

He led Harris to an underground cell and locked him inside. The room was dark and stank of putrid flesh. It took time for Harris's eyes to get accustomed to the gloom, but when they did he was in for a terrible shock.

‘The first object that attracted my eyes was a body lying in the middle of the room. It was the corpse of a man and formed a ghastly spectacle. Stripped of all clothing and shockingly mutilated, the head had been roughly hacked off and the floor all round was swimming in blood.'

Harris had a great deal of experience of life in Morocco and had also written at length about Raisuli. He tried to keep calm and to assess the situation with a clear head. He reckoned that he was worth more to Raisuli alive, as a hostage that could be used as a bargaining chip.

But he became increasingly concerned when he was led from his cell in order to witness an even more gruesome cadaver than the one sharing his cell.

‘A ghastly sight,' he later wrote. ‘The summer's heat had already caused the corpse to discolour and swell. An apple had been stuck in the man's mouth and both his eyes had been gouged out.'

He was informed that the same treatment awaited him if he tried to play any tricks.

The British Minister, Sir Arthur Nicolson, learned of Harris's capture and tentatively opened negotiations with Raisuli. The bandit had a number of demands, the most important of which was the release of his fifty-six blood relatives. These were being held alongside hundreds of other bandits in the sultan's prisons in Tangier and Larache. The sultan would have executed them long ago, if only he knew which of them were related to Raisuli.

After much wrangling a deal of sorts was struck. Twelve prisoners would be released in exchange for Harris's freedom. But Raisuli proved a slippery captor and kept raising the number, aware that he was holding an extremely valuable Christian captive.

Harris was caught in an impossible predicament. Yet he held a few cards and he was determined to play them with skill. He persuaded Raisuli to tell him the names of all fifty-six relatives that he wanted released. He promised to send this list to Tangier in order that Nicolson could exert his influence to win their freedom. Raisuli did exactly as Harris requested, unaware that he had fallen headlong into a trap.

‘You propose to kill me,' said Harris to the bandit chief. ‘Possibly you will do so, but you have kindly given me a list of all your relations who are in the Moorish prison. This list is now in Tangier. You will have the satisfaction of killing me, but remember this – on fifty-six consecutive days one of your sons or brothers or nephews will be executed, one each morning.'

Shortly afterwards Harris was released by a furious Raisuli.
The Times
correspondent delighted in his trick and took great relish in describing it in his memoirs.

‘It was a splendid bluff,' he wrote, ‘and I felt the greatest delight in using it.' Not only had he saved his own life, but he had also made a mockery of Raisuli and his tribesmen. ‘They swore and cursed and threatened, but to no avail.'

Not for the first time – and nor for the last – Walter Harris had got the upper hand.

 

23

And Then There Were None

There were eight of them at the outset, convicts making their escape from a penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, today's Tasmania. Their leader was Alexander Pearce, a pockmarked Irishman with a hot head and a reputation for violence. He, in common with his fellow convicts, had been incarcerated in the dreaded Macquarie Harbour penal settlement on Tasmania's remote west coast.

In September 1822, Pearce was working in a labour gang and made his escape by stealing a boat. Seven others jumped into the boat and made their getaway with him.

They were a motley band of thieves, highwaymen and common criminals: Matthew Travers, Alexander Dalton, Robert Greenhill, John Mather, William Kennerly, Thomas Bodenham and Edward ‘Little' Brown.

The men rowed unnoticed to the far side of the bay and then sank their stolen boat before making their way into the dense forest. Their goal was the settlement of Hobart at the mouth of the Derwent, where they hoped to steal a ship and sail for England.

They were unaware that to reach Hobart meant traversing some of the most rugged and inhospitable terrain in Australia. The weather only added to their woes. The rain tipped down relentlessly, soaking them to the bone. As the chill wind whipped at their scant clothing, some of them began to complain that they were unable to keep up.

One of the men, William Kennerly, made a cruel but telling jest about their lack of food. ‘I am so weak,' he said, ‘that I could eat a piece of man.' It soon transpired that he was not joking. He suggested that they should kill the weakest of their company and eat him.

Not everyone agreed. Even though they were hardened criminals, several spoke out against cold-blooded murder. But Robert Greenhill sided with Kennerly. Deranged by hunger, he singled out Alexander Dalton and decided to act immediately, picking up his axe and smashing it into Dalton's skull. He was killed instantly.

Greenhill's comrade-in-arms Matthew Travers willingly joined the bloodletting. ‘With a knife [he] also came and cut his throat … we tore out his insides and cut off his head.' The remaining seven men divided Dalton into equal portions and ate him.

Even so, the meal proved poor sustenance and did little to help them regain their strength. Two of the men soon fell behind the others and were lost. Both would eventually be recaptured by local guards: both would die soon after.

The remaining five escapees crossed the many rivers by dragging each other over with a long pole. The procedure consumed so much energy that they decided another man had to die. This time it was Thomas Bodenham's turn. Greenhill split his skull with an axe and the remaining four men ate him until there was nothing left.

They had been on the run for nearly a month when John Mather fell seriously ill with dysentery. Aware that he was next for the axe, he begged to be allowed to pray before they killed him. He then ‘laid down his head and Greenhill took the axe and killed him'.

Shortly after Mather had been eaten, Matthew Travers was bitten by a snake. As he weakened, he, too, was axed to death.

Now, there were only Pearce and Greenhill left. Greenhill had the sole axe, which he zealously guarded. Neither man dared to sleep, for fear that he would be killed by the other.

After several days of playing a deadly game of cat and mouse, both men were exhausted. Against his better judgement, Greenhill fell asleep.

Pearce seized the opportunity. ‘I run up [sic], and took the axe from under his head, and struck him with it and killed him.' He hacked off Greenhill's arm and thigh and took them with him.

Pearce continued through the wilderness for several days until he reached a clearing that was being farmed by a shepherd. The shepherd took pity on Pearce and offered him shelter. Once he was restored to health, Pearce fell in with a couple of criminal bushrangers and lived with them for two months before all three men were tracked down and captured. By this time, Pearce had been on the run for four months, of which almost half had been spent in the wild.

Pearce was placed under lock and key in Hobart, where he made a full and frank confession to the Reverend Robert Knopwood, the town's chaplain and magistrate. Knopwood didn't believe Pearce's account of cannibalism – it was too horrific – and had him sent him back to Macquarie Harbour.

Within a few months Pearce once again made his escape, this time taking with him a young lad named Thomas Cox.

Cox's freedom was to prove short-lived. Pearce killed him within a few days and was in the process of eating him when he was once again captured. This time his tales of cannibalism were found to be true, for poor Cox's mutilated remains were discovered nearby.

Pearce was hanged in July 1824. Shortly before he died, he was heard to say: ‘Man's flesh is delicious. It tastes far better than pork or fish.'

After his death, his body was given to a surgeon and dissected. His skull was eventually presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia where it was given pride of place in a glass showcase.

It remains there to this day.

 

24

Edwin Darling's Nightmare

Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Darling was confident that he ran the most secure prisoner-of-war camp in Britain.

Camp 198 near Bridgend in South Wales, known locally as Island Farm, was surrounded by a high-wire fence and equipped with searchlights and guard dogs. At night, sentries made frequent patrols around the site.

There was good reason for the security. By the spring of 1945, the camp housed more than 2,000 German POWs. These included several elite SS commanders and half-a-dozen Luftwaffe fighter pilots. When these hardened Nazis had been brought to the camp, they arrived in defiant mood, singing ‘we are marching to England'.

Darling knew that any successful escape would be a propaganda disaster. The last thing he wanted was a German equivalent of the Allied breakout from Stalag Luft III. The men involved in that escape had been feted as heroes and their courage would later be immortalized in the Hollywood movie
The Great Escape
.

On the evening of 10 March 1945, Darling retired to bed unaware of anything untoward in the offing. The evening roll call had brought no unwelcome surprises and the prisoners had returned to their dormitories without trouble.

The only clue that something was wrong came later that night, when Darling's sleep was interrupted by the sound of prisoners singing loudly. But this was not unusual, for the inmates of Camp 198 often sang until late into the night.

Their rousing choruses were for a purpose. For many months, they had been secretly digging a huge underground tunnel that led from Hut 9 to the outside world. By the second week of March, it was complete and scores of prisoners were hoping to make their escape.

The 70-foot tunnel was a consummate work of German engineering. It descended deep into the clay subsoil before rising towards a small opening in a newly ploughed field on the far side of the perimeter fence. The prisoners had excavated it using knives and cooking utensils stolen from the camp kitchens.

The soil was disposed of in novel fashion. The POWs had managed to construct a fake wall at the end of Hut 9, using old tiles and bricks. They then pushed the excavated soil through a false air vent and into the cavity behind the wall.

The tunnel's roof was supported with wood stolen from oak benches in the canteen and the floor was lined with old clothes to ensure that escapees would not get dirty. There was even electric lighting, which could be used as a warning system whenever a guard was approaching.

Most extraordinary of all was the tunnel's air supply. Dozens of milk tins had been linked together to form a tube and air was forced through this tube by means of a four-bladed fan.

The night of the great escape was meticulously planned. Each prisoner was given an allotted time to pass through the tunnel and many of the men were equipped with maps of the local area. Some planned to steal cars and drive to Cardiff in the hope of smuggling themselves aboard ships heading to the continent. Others, emboldened by their training as pilots, hoped to steal planes and fly back to Germany.

It was shortly before midnight when the great escape began. Among the escapees was an SS officer named Karl Ludwig and his colleague Heinz Herzler. They slipped through the tunnel and successfully emerged into the field beyond the perimeter fence. They then followed their fellow escapees into the surrounding woodland.

As they crept along the road towards Cardiff, they encountered a drunken man returning home. They hid themselves in a hedge and waited for him to pass.

It was an unfortunate hiding place. The man staggered over to where Karl Ludwig was crouched in the undergrowth and answered a call of nature, unaware that he was urinating on an SS officer.

Most escapees had chosen to flee from the camp in small groups. One band of four men made their getaway in a stolen car. Others went on foot, trying to reach nearby railway stations before dawn.

Back at Camp 198, Lieutenant Colonel Darling slept on through the night, ignorant of what was taking place. It was not until 2.15 a.m., four hours after the first batch of prisoners had escaped, that the camp guards heard strange noises and realized something was wrong. They immediately awoke Darling and then raised the alarm. A rollcall of prisoners revealed that almost ninety had gone missing.

By daybreak, a massive nationwide manhunt was under way. According to the
Daily Express
, ‘spotter planes flew over the Vale of Glamorgan while troops, Home Guard and police, all armed with tommy guns, searched the woods, fields and ditches'.

Though well trained, the German prisoners were at a huge disadvantage. They were highly conspicuous and poorly equipped. Karl Ludwig and Heinz Herzler redoubled their efforts to reach Cardiff after their unfortunate incident in the hedge, but it was not long before they were sighted by a local policeman named Philip Baverstock. He promptly arrested them.

Other prisoners were even less successful: most were captured within a few miles of the camp and it was not long before all of them were soon back in their huts.

At least that was the official version of the story. But how many really escaped? And how many were recaptured?

Unofficial accounts suggest that 84 prisoners got out of the camp, 8 more than the Allied POWs who escaped from Stalag Luft III. But because 14 were quickly recaptured, officials claimed (for propaganda purposes) that only 70 Germans escaped.

When the issue was raised in parliament, the Minister of War, Arthur Henderson, assured the country that the actual number was 67. There was good reason for him being economical with the truth. Several days after the breakout, three suspicious-looking Germans – escaped prisoners – were spotted near Canterbury in Kent. They managed to evade capture and were never seen again.