The Dodger: The Extraordinary Story of Churchill's American Cousin, Two World Wars, and the Great Escape by Tim Carroll

Author:Tim Carroll
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780762787760
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2013-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Polish Interlude

With the Allied officers’ appetite for escape clearly undiminished, the Luftwaffe quickly began to realize that putting all the rotten eggs in one basket might not have been such a good idea after all. It decided to send some hundred of the most accomplished escape artists to a Wehrmacht camp in Poland. Among those who were to be sent to this less lenient army camp were Jimmy Buckley; Aidan Crawley, the officer who subsequently wrote the official history of RAF escapes; Peter Fanshawe; Paddy Barthropp, an irrepressible RAF fighter pilot; and Jimmy James.

“The list of prisoners . . . read like a Who’s Who of recidivist escapers,” observed Bill Ash, an American Spitfire pilot flying with the Royal Canadian Air Force, who was also on the list.

Johnny wasn’t included, nor was Wings Day. Because most of their friends were being relocated, Wings beseeched von Lindeiner to let them both go along, and the commandant gave his assent. In November 1942 the “deportees” left for Schubin in northwest Poland.

Their new quarters at Oflag XXI B were near Posen, about 150 miles west of Warsaw. The prisoners were accompanied by some of the Sagan German security staff, notably Feldwebel Hermann Glemnitz. The men were crowded into the third-class compartments of an ancient steam train, the windows of which had been secured with closely entwined barbed wire and planks. To discourage them from escaping en route, Glemnitz made them take their boots off, and they were piled in an untidy heap at the end of one of the compartments. The trip to Schubin, which was only a hundred miles or so away, began to seem interminable as the train chugged slowly across bleak Polish countryside, stopping at quiet local stations for no apparent reason and sometimes remaining stationary for hours. It took a day and a half to complete the journey. Glemnitz’s precautions seemed to have their desired effect. Bereft of footwear, there were no serious attempts on the part of the prisoners to alight into the cold Polish countryside—except for one.

As the train reached the end of its journey it crawled at an even slower pace, and Johnny obtained permission to answer a call of nature. He was escorted to a lavatory at the end of one of the passenger cars. Once inside the cramped cubicle he found the small window to the outside world had been barred with planks and wires. But flushing the toilet, he lost no time in levering the makeshift obstruction apart, the noise of the slushing water disguising the sound of his machinations. Within moments Johnny was squeezing his bulky frame through the opening and jumping out of the slow-moving train. In no time he had hit the ground and was running across an open field. Unfortunately, and within seconds, a volley of shots rang out. Johnny put his hands up, and his brief spell of freedom was at an end.

When the guards led him back to the train, Johnny smiled and said, “No harm

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