British Secret Agent Tortured by Gestapo In a Refrigerator

Grey River Argus, 19 May 1947, Page 8

British Secret Agent Tortured by Gestapo In a Refrigerator

I will tell you the story of how the escape organisation known as “Pat” —of which I was chief—planned and carried out the first mass escape of the war, writes Lieut.-Com. Patrick O’Leary, G.C’., D. 5.0., R.N. “Pat had organised such a number of breakaways from St. Hippolyte de Fort, near Kimes, that the Germans decided to move all prisoners to La Turbie, on the Italian border. To free men from this prison meant a journey of 250 miles across Occupied Europe before the prisoners even reached the escape zone on the beaches of Perpignan, or the shelter of the Pyrenees A number of the prisoners were on the point of being repatriated to Britain via a neutral country when Paris was bombed for the first time, and, as a reprisal, the men wer» sent to La Turbie.

DRUGGED GUARDS

Among them was Squadron-Lead • ei’ Whitney Straight. Whitney Straight had been wounded in action and on arrival at La Turbia managed to persuade the prison doctor that he was in need of medical attention. So he was sent to Nice military hospital, promptly escaped by drugging the guards and passed into our hands. He gave me most valuable information .about the prison layout at La Turbie, and it was perfectly obvious from this that no escape could be planned without some help from inside. But the position of the prison was an encouragement.

It stood on a hill and I discovered that the main sewer pipe—which was just large enough for a man to crawl through—came out on the bank of a small stream near the foot of the hill. If the prisoners could tunnel their way down into the sewer they had an escape route.

PRIEST AIDS

The next step was to make contact with the senior officer in the camp. He was Squadron-Leader Higginson. I contacted him through a Polish priest who was a regular visitor to the prison. Higginson set to work with others, and four weeks later the tunnel connecting with the sewer was complete. The first escape was on a small scale ,and in reality was a rehearsal for the larger exploit to follow. Higginson, with six other men, got safely away.

HID IN TEA HOUSE

We hid them in Monte Carlo at a Scotch tea house run by Mrs. Trenchard, .. an Englishwoman to whom many British and American pilots owed their freedom. With the second, and much larger, escape now arranged, I radioed London and arranged to have a ship pick the men up from the beaches near Perpignan. This meant an overland trip from La Turbie, but we estimated that by splitting the party—36 in all —into six groups we could get them across country by night; hide them by day, and assemble them at a lonely beach bungalow on the night arranged for the ship’s visit.

I had six men at the sewer outfall, but instead of 36 prisoners, 58 emerged.

TOO STOUT

The only unlucky man was a pilot named Mott, who was so stout that he couldn’t get through the gaps that barred the- sewer exit. He had to be left, and was. still trying to wriggle through when the police rounded him up. We did not get the whole 58 as far as the beaches. The French police and the Gestapo were everywhere, and 14 of the prison breakers were unlucky. But we did get 44 safely across country, all of them dressed as civilians and carrying complete sets oi false identity papers. We had the use of a small bungalow near the beach, and here the 44 assembled on the appointed night for embarkation. I hid myself in the sand dunes and at sero hour —2 a.m. French time—gave the signal, three green flashes. But there was no answer, and at dawn were still waiting. The same thing happened the nex-t night, and again on the third night. 1 cannot describe the disappointment of the 44 men who had been kept waiting on edge so long. I told them I had already carried out half a dozen of these operations without a hitch ,and that there must have been some breakdown somewhere. As we could not possibly go on hiding 44 men in one small bungalow for long, I made for Marseilles and radioed London. 1 was informed by return that a British warship had been standing by the appointed rendezvous and that one of her boats had approached the beach. I could only surmise that they had gone to the wrong place, and explained the fix we were in. •

NAVY TO RESCUE

The Admiralty wasted no time. They instructed a warship to make at full speed for a position three miles off the French coast. I raced back to Perpignan. There was no mistake this time. Before dawn every man had been taken off the beaches and put safely aboard a British destroyer. My own run of luck was now coming to an end. Without warning the owners of an hotel in Toulouse, one of our most useful hiding places, were arrested. I was still wondering what to do when a man named Uhlmann cafrie to see me. He was the liaison with Roger le Legionnaire, one of our Paris workers. Uhlmann arranged a meeting between le Legionnaire and me in a Toulouse cafe. We found le Legionnaire looking somewhat. nervous, and we had a couple of drinks together.

GESTAPO TRAP

Just as I began to question him I. felt cold steel pressing at the nape of my neck. The Gestapo had overtaken me. I was taken to their headquarters and stripped. The searchers even found the tiny phial of potassium cyanide sewn into the

hem of my jacket. I was then stood against a wall with my hands over my head for five hours. Then the interrogation began. I told them nothing. After it I was carried into a large refrigerator in one corner of the room, lifted in, and the door slammed. “We’ll come and have a look at you in a few hours’ time,” said one of my guards. A painful .tingling sensation began to creep over me as the blood, almost literally, began to freeze in my veins. I will never forget the nightmares I had then. I was running away before -an avalanche of snow, and the faster I ran the closer and bigger it became —towering over me and threatening at every moment to engulf me.

SLOWLY THAWED

Then I became aware of the refrigerator door opening. An electric fire was glowing. I was put in front of it, and had another hour of acute pain as my limbs slowly thawed. 7 realised someone was speaking to me, though the voice sounded miles away. “What do you know about “Pat?*’ it asked. I dropped sidewajtf in the chair, water now dripping from my thawing hair. My tortuerers saw that they were wasting time, so they forced hot coffee and cognac between my teeth and then left me for an hour. I would gladly have drunk a pint of it, but my. jaws seemed almost locked, and it was hours before they would move freely and without pain. Then two Gestapo guards sei about beating me up. I recovered consciousness about eight o’clock next morning and another day’s beating followed Then I was flung into solitary confinement.

NOT CAUGHT OUT

In more than a fortnight of questioning—which usually began at eight in the morning and ended at midnight—l was not caught out once. I described minutely the agents I pretended to know, but with one? difference. My descriptions were the exact opposite of the facts. And it all proved ridiculously easy, for I had only to picture the man in my mind and then describe him in reverse. I gave details about scores of meeting places—and applied just the same principle.

BEATINGS CEASE

In the 15 days of questioning the Germans got enough out of me to compile a 75-page dossier on the ramifications of our organisation—and about the only true statement in it was that describing me as the former chief. Not one former member of “Pat” was rounded up as a result of my revelations —but the Germans seemed quite happy, and I received no more beatings. Then, in April, 1943, I was transferred to Fresnes Prison, near Paris, where I spent four months before being moved on to a concentration camp at Neue-Brenn, near Saarbrucken. From Neue-Brenn we were eventually sent to the extermination camp at Mauthausen, near Linz, in Austria, where we stayed until released by the Allied armies. Now I am about to pick up, once more, the threads of dife as a very ordinary doctor in a small town in the Ardennes.

A GREAT IDEA

The only thing I wanted to do was to lie in a stupor and let the hours roll by. And >et I knew that if 1 went on just refusing to talk I would almost certainly be beaten to death. I had to think up some way of talking without giving away one actual scrap of information. Then I had the great idaa, an idea with all the simplicity of genius. And I had it just in time—for I was hauled out of my cell, packed into a prison van, and taken from Toulouse to Marseilles for on-the-spot interrogation by another Gestapo chief. “Before you start interrogating me,” I told him, “just let me say this. I don’t want to be beaten to death, so I’ve decided to talk.

“But there’s something: I must explain to you,” I went on. “As you know, this organisation was begun on British lines —and that means emphasis on security. “So it’s useless asking me hundreds of questions about our agents all over France—because I only know a handful of. them—between 15 and 20 altogether.” “That is reasonable,” he remarked.