THEY DEFIED PRISON BARS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23839, 14 December 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

THEY DEFIED PRISON BARS

Amazing Escapes Against Tremendous Odds

By W. E. JOHNS

PARAMOUNT among those things which a man doesn't miss until he's lost it, is freedom—personal liberty. Not until a man finds his sphere of operations limited to a few square yards of space bounded by four blank walls does he realise what he had—but has no longer.

AT this very moment, soldiers, r\ sailors, airmen, and civilians -*• by the thousand arc shut liehind bolts and bars. In all their minds there is but a single thought —Escape. It is the passion of their waking hours. They dream of it by night. Some British airmen have already escaped. More will escape. Others will fail, only to try again, and again. The worse the punishment for failure, the more desperate will be the urge to succeed, for death is preferable to purgatory, and this is why men in their efforts lo escape ha\ v e taken chances which jnake the blood run cold with [horror. Victim of Inquisition Some have achieved, if not the impossible, something very like it. If yon doubt that, yon have only to glance at your history book and read of such men as Cellini, the artist; Casanova; "Harvey Logan, the outlaw —there are hundreds of them, men of all classes guilty and innocent. It was, I think—if I may be personal for a moment—the incredible exploits of these men that inspired me to break out of a German prison in the last war. After what they did, I told myself, nothing was hopeless. What did they do? Let us see. In the eighteenth century, Jean Casunova, aged 30, was arrested by the Inquisition on a charge of black magic end incarcerated in the dreaded "leads" of the Ducal Palace of Yenice. Squatting in his tiny coop of a cell right up under the leaden roof of the palace, too low for him to stand upright, he knew that nothing short of a miracle would allow him to see the outside world again. He determined to escape. By a trick he obtained possession of a small piece of iron, on which he worked for many weeks to sharpen.it into an instrument. Then he started digging a hole through the oak boards under his bed, working all through the night for months on. end. What agonies ho suffered during this dread-

ful period we can only surmise, but eventually the hole was large enough for him to get through. That evening he was moved to another cell. All his labour was in vain.. Imagine his feelings! To make matters worse the hole was discovered, and more restrictions imposed. Undaunted, lie started all over again, and after lift-eon months of heartbreaking toil cut his way through to the roof, hundreds of feet above the courtyard. The pitch of the leaden roof was steep, and it was slippery with rain. I 1 or hours he crawled about, seeking a way down, on one occasion hanging by his hands from the guttering with his legs swinging in space. In this way he reached a dormer window which gave access to the palace. He cut his way through several doors to the ground floor and, escaping, lied the country. Cellini, the artist, was thirty-seven when he was thrown into the Castle of St. Angelo, at Rome, by order of the Pope. By a clever ruse he obtained a knife, and over a period of time unscrewed the bolts that fastened the lock on his door. One night, having reached a window, he cut his sheets into strips, knotted them, and lowered himself hundreds of feet. He fell, cutting his bead and breaking his leg; yet. with all this he crawled away to safety. Here we see the courage and determination of the true escaper. A Wire Noose Harvey Logan, American outlaw, had plenty of incentive to escape, for he had been sentenced to 1 MO years' imprisonment. He was put in the condemned cell, for lie was known to be a desperado who had already broken gaol more than once. Armed guards were posted at the door of his cell. Yet this man. entirely by his own efforts, escaped. Surely this is encouragement to those who now linger in Nazi dungeons. The only article ever allowed in his cell was the broom with which he had to sweep it, up. but at some time it had been broken, and repaired with a piece of wire. This Logan removed and fashioned into a noose. He had observed that although two men were normally on guard, at dinner-time one went away to fetch food. Next day be waited for this moment to arrive, and began operations by thanking the remaining guard for his

kindness, and offered to toll him where lie had hidden the proceeds of a bank robbery. The guard came near—too near. Logan reached through the bars in a flash, and pulled the wire noose taut round his throat. "Drop your gun or I'll choke you," he snarled. The warder had no choice but to comply. "Now drop your keys inside the cell.'' ordered Logan. The outlaw now loosened the wire only enough to prevent the warder from choking to death. He got possession of the gun. With the keys he unlocked the cell door and went on to the end of the corridor, where another warder was on duty. Logan held him up at the point of the gun. locked him up. held up the guard at the outside gates, stole a horse and galloped away to safety. It was, perhaps, the most astonishing gaol break of all time. One lone prisoner in a cell, surrounded by armed guards, with no other -weapon than a piece of wire, got out of the toughest prison in the country. What ever we may think of his career as an outlaw, the feat commands respect.