The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram by David Guss

Author:David Guss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Around 4 p.m., two Austrian soldiers came to take him away. They were a curiously mismatched pair – one tall, one short, yet both remarkably calm. Alastair called them ‘placid’. They took the train to Klagenfurt where they found a first-class carriage to spend the night. The guards were asleep in minutes, their rifles left within easy reach. While part of him preferred to rest as well, it seemed almost irresponsible not to escape. The door was open, the guards snoring, all he had to do was leave. Across the river was a low range of Alps and beyond that, Italy. Of course, he knew that he was in no condition to climb. He was ‘as weak as a new born puppy dog’. And yet, he couldn’t resist.

Once outside the station, he grabbed a bike. Only this time, the owner was standing nearby and started to shout. A crowd quickly formed and might have turned violent if the two guards hadn’t arrived to save him. More embarrassed than angry, they agreed to say nothing for fear of being punished for negligence. Their next stop was Spittal, the same camp near the Italian border from which many of the first group from Gavi had escaped. Now Alastair had to struggle to get in. He hadn’t a shred of evidence to prove who he was – no papers, no identity disc, nothing.

‘Then perhaps I can just leave,’ he said.

‘Ja, ja, ja,’ smiled the commandant, as if he’d heard this joke a million times. ‘We’ll let you in.’ And off he went to solitary.

Alastair was at Spittal for a week, most of it spent eating, thanks to an Australian sergeant major who brought him large quantities of food every day. This was never a problem as the prisoners, who worked on surrounding farms and in the forest, returned with a daily haul of dairy, meat and other products. There was even an excellent brewery, run by a select group known as the Haggis Busters. By the time he left, he felt strong and healthy once again. His rucksack, miraculously returned with his compass and maps intact, was also stuffed to the brim with an assortment of delicacies. Among the guards who came to get him was a middle-aged sergeant captured at the Somme during the First World War. Held as a prisoner near Glasgow, he spoke English with a Scottish accent and didn’t stop talking all the way to Moosburg.

Getting back into that camp was even harder than at Spittal, especially when he refused to tell the Germans how he had escaped. By now he’d had so many identities that no one was quite sure who he was. He convinced them, though, and after a week in a gloomy punishment block was wandering about the compounds once again. He found many new prisoners from Italy, including more than 1,000 from Chieti. Among them were a number of old friends who told the pathetic story of how their own men had been posted as guards after the armistice to prevent their escape.

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