REMARKABLE ESCAPE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4233, 19 January 1940, Page 7

REMARKABLE ESCAPE

SOME DARING PLOTS. A minor but most interesting section of the vast number of books written about the Great War of 1914-18 comprised the personal narratives of prisoners of war who escaped. More than a dozen books of this kind have been published in England. Most of them record the escapes of British prisoners of war from German prison camps, but several of them deal with the escapes of German prisoners of war from England. In most cases the difficulties in the way of reaching the frontier and crossing it into neutral territory were greater than the diffi-. culties of escaping from prison camps and many attempts to escape ended in the capture of the fugitives close to the frontier, beyond which freedom awaited them. In the case of German prisoners who escaped from British prison eamps, the problem of getting out of England was more difficult than that of crossing a closely guarded frontier. An ingenious plan to escape from England in a German submarine was arranged by Lieut. Commander Hermann Tholons, who with two companions broke out of the prison camp at Dyffryn Aled, near Denbigh, in North Wales. When the war started in August, 1914, Lieut. Commander Tholens was second in command Of the German cruiser Mainz, which, with two other cruisers, was sunk during a raid by an English fleet into the Bight of Heligoland on August 28, 1914. After being about an hour in the water he was picked up and taken on board a British destroyer. He was sent to the naval hospital at Chatham, and from there was transferred to the prison camp at Dyffryn Aled. “This camp was, I think, one of the best guarded of all prisoner of war camps in the whole of Britain, probably because most of its inmates were submarine officers,” wrote Lieut. Commander Tholens. “My thoughts turned to escape at once, but I am six feet two Inches in height, and this, I believed, would make it difficult for me to move about English ports and dockyards undetected. So I decided to try to arrange to leave in much the same way that I had come —that is to say, by means of one of our own ships of war. The coast of Wales was only a few miles off, and it seemed to me that if only I could break camp and get there, I might arrange for a German submarine to meet me there and take me off, TRYST WITH A SUBMARINE. “This plan for a rendezvous needed very careful and accurate arrangement, but I talked it over with a fellow prisoner, my friend Lieut. Commander von Hennig, who had been captain of our submarine 18,” continues Lieut. Commander Tholen’s narrative. “We made a careful investigation of the camp defences, and decided that if we could get our Admiralty to send a submarine to a certain part of the coast at a certain time, we could keep our side of the bargain and be there to meet it." As the result of the exchange of some prisoners between Great Britain and Germany at Christmas, 1914, Lieut. Commander Tholens sent a letter secretly to the commander in chief of the German submarine flotillas, asking if it would be possible for one of the submarines operating in the Irish Sea to take them off. He proposed that the submarine would await them off the most westerly point of Great Ormes Head. It was finally arranged by surreptitious correspondence that a submarine would await the escaped prisoners at the proposed locality on the night of August 14, 1915. If they were not there to time the submarine would remain in the vicinity, and await them the following night. They were to signal the submarine by means of an electric pocket lamp, which was to be waved in circles.

This ingenious plan almost succeeded. The three prisoners broke out of the camp at Dyffryn Aled, despite the fact that it was strictly guarded, and they reached Great Ormes Head in safety on August 14, and found a good hiding place in some bushes near the lighthouse. About 10 o’clock they left their hiding place with the intention of descending the steep cliff and awaiting the submarine at the foot of it, but in the darkness they could not find a place where they could descend, and rather than risk falling down the cliff they remained on top, and made their signals with the electric pocket lamp. They had to act with caution in signalling, as the road along the cliff and around the lighthouse was constantly patrolled by coastguards. They received no answer to their signals, and they assumed that the submarine was not there; so they decided to look for it the following night from the foot of the cliff. But the submarine was there within a hundred yards of the rocks, with a collapsible boat ready to take them off. Though the crew of the submarine were keenly on the watch for signals on shore, they did not see any. Before dawn the submarine left the locality with the intention of returning again at night. The escaped prisoners remained in hiding throughout the day, and made their way to the foot of the cliff before darkness set in. "At 10 o’clock we began to give our signals,” states Lieut. Commander i Tholens. "It was a wonderful night—-

absolutely dark with no moon. The sea was quiet, and only a light breeze was blowing. If the submarine was there she would certainly make out our signals at a distance of at least two miles. But we got no answer. We began to think she must have had some mishap and had not been able to reach the rendezvous in time. In desperation we made a large fire from bits of drift-wood, and every ten minutes during the last hour of darkness we waved a large log of flaming wood in a circle. But no answei- came.

Subsequently he learned that as the captain of the submarine, who was an old friend, knew from his experience on the previous night that there were no patrol boats about, he approached the shore early in the evening so as to get as close as possible. “That was our bad luck,” states Lieut. Commander Tholens. "For there it was all the time waiting for us, but closer in than we expected, and just hidden from us by a projecting ledge of rock. It waited for us there not more than 500 yards away, but was not able to see our signals.”

A gqle sprang up and the escaped prisoners decided that it would be useless to await the submarine a third night. Lieut. Commander Tholens left his companions, with the intention of making his way to London and stowing away on a Dutch or Scandinavian vessel. But at the railway station at Llandudno, where he went to get a train to London, a policeman stopped him and said he looked like one of the German officers who had escaped three days ago from the camp at Dyffryn Aled. He admitted his identity and was escarted back to camp. GERMAN PRISON CAMP. Major A. J. Evans, a British officer, who holds the remarkable record of having escaped from a prison camp in Germany and subsequently from the Turks in Palestine, though in the latter case he was recaptured, wrote as follows in his book, “The Escaping Club,” concerning the German prison camp Fort 9, at Ingoldstadt, to which he was sent after escaping from the camp at -Clausthal, and getting to within fifty yards of the Dutch frontier before he was captured: “There were about 150 officer prisoners in the place, and of these at least 130 had made sucessful attempts to escape from other camps, and had only been recaught after from three days to there weeks’ temporary freedom. When I arrived 75 per cent of the prisoners were scheming and working continually to this end. Some had tramped to the Dutch or Swiss frontier, and had been captured there; some had taken the train (those who could speak German), and had been eventually caught by some mischance, and all firmly believed that it was only the blackets misfortune which had prevented them fl’om crossing the frontier, and were convinced that, if once they could get clear of the camp, they would read neutral territory and freedom.

“Escaping and how it should be done, what to beware of and what to risk, what food to take, what clothes to wear, maps, compasses and how to get them, how to look after your feet and how to light -a fire without smoke, where to cross the frontier and what route to take, and a hundred other things connected with escaping, were the most frequent subjects of conversation, and rarely out of the thoughts of the great majority of the prisoners at Fort 9. Each man was ready to give the benefit of his experiences, his advice and his Immediate help to anyone who asked for them. In fact, we pooled our knowledge. The camp was nothing else than an escaping club. Each man was ready to help anyone who wished to escape, and had a plan, quite regardless of his own risk or the punishment he might bring on himself.

“There were in the camp, mainly among the Frenchmen, some of the most ingenious people .1 have ever come across. Men who could make keys which would unlock any door; men who could temper and jag the edge of an old table knife so that it would cut bars; expert photographers (very useful for copying maps); engineering experts who would be called in to give advice on aiiy tunnel that was being dug; men who spoke German perfectly; men who shammed insanity perfectly, and many, like myself, who were ready to risk a bit to get out but had no parlour tricks. Ohe had escaped from his prison camp dressed as a German officer; another had escaped in a dirty clothes basket, and another had been wheeled out of camp hidden in a muck tub; another sportsman had painted his face green to look like a water lily, and had swum the moat in daylight under the sentry’s nose.” COLLECTING THE KIT. Civilian clothes in which to escape and journey to the frontier (which was more than 200 miles from some of the prison camps in Germany) without attracting attention while passing through towns and villages or travelling by train were an essential part of the equipment of prisoners who were planning to escape. Prisoners showed much ingenuity in collecting the necessary civilian kit. Sometimes they were able to bribe a sentry at the camp into supplying an old coat or cap, in exchange for food, soap or cigarettes they had received in the parcels sent by relatives and friends in England. It was generally easier to bribe in this way workmen who came to the camp to carry out

some temporary , work. Major Evans mentions that r. German tailor who was allowed into the prison camp at Clausthal to repair the clothes of some of the prisoners brought with with him secretly a number of civilian suits, which were eagerly bought by the prisoners. Major Evans, who joined the Flying Corps, and served on the Western Front, was taken prisoner on July 16, 1916, after a forced landing behind the German lines. He escaped ten months later when being transferred from Fort 9, Ingoldstadt, to Zorndorf. While fellow prisoners in the railway carriage diverted the attention of the guard, Major Evans and a comrade, Lieut. Buckley, jumped out of a win dow. They made their way on foot to the Swiss frontier, about 200 miles away, which they crossed on the eighteenth night after their escape.

AHEM! “Is the head of the house in, sonny ?” “No, sir. There’s nobody home but Dad and me.” THE WRONG TIME. £ A sailor called unexpectedly on his fiancee one night. He found her all dressed up in her best party frock. X ‘,‘That's the spirit,” he told h®. “No need to look gloomy." ” Just then the ’phone bell rang, ujj! the sailor answered It. X "What?” he said. “Oh, yes—judging by the number of U-boats we'fr sunk, I should certainly think And he hung up the receiver. Z. “Who was that?” asked the girl.Z “Oh,” he said, “just a fellow 'wfib wanted to know If the coast is clear!"