Shaps
Well Camp as sketched by: Leutnant Heinz-Georg Moellenbrock
As
it is today as the considerably extended Shaps Well Hotel
German And Italian Escape Attempts From Other Camps In Great Britain
Camp 13: Shap Fells Hotel,
Penrith, Westmoorland
Harry Wappler - Heinkel He111 crashed into a barrage balloon over Newport, Monmouthsire
Heinz Schnabel - was among the 80+ pilots shot down in September 1940.
These two POWs escaped by hiding in the laundry baskets and stowed away on a
train bound for Carlisle. Posing as Dutch airmen they successfully stole a plane
from Kingstown airfield. (The unit operating there was No.15 Elementary Flying
Training School).
Seriously low on fuel they spotted an aerodrome and refuelled but on taking
off again they got lost in bad weather, ran low on fuel again and had to land
in a meadow 5 miles north of Great Yarmouth. Still pretending to be Dutch airmen
they were taken to Horsham, St Faith (one of Bomber Commands most important
aerodromes in East Anglia). By this time, news of the stolen aeroplane had got
to light and flashed around the country. The two men were arrested.
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Shaps
Well Camp as sketched by: Leutnant Heinz-Georg Moellenbrock
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As
it is today as the considerably extended Shaps Well Hotel
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Camp 17: Lodge Moor Camp, Sheffield.
A planned break out was given away and later the prisoner believed to have been
responsible for giving the escape attempt away, Gerhardt Rettig, was chased
around the camp by a howling mob before he was severely beaten. He was taken
to hospital but died from internal bleeding.
The trial of 4 POWs took place at the London cage in Kensington Palace Gardens:
Unteroffizier Heinz Ditzler
Soldat Juergen Kersting
Feldwebel Emil Schmittendorf
Armin Kuehne
(2 days after Gerhardt Rettig died, both Schmittendorf and Ditzler managed to
crawl under the wire. After a short spell of liberty, they were recaptured)
Heinz Ditzler and Juergen Kersting were acquitted because of insufficient evidence.
18 year old Kuehne and Schmittendorf were found guilty and were executed on
the 16th November at Pentonville Prison in London.
Camp 23: Le Marchant, Devizes,
Wiltshire. / Camp 21: Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland
Twenty-eight ringleaders were taken from this camp to the maximum
security cells at the London Cage, Kensington. The escape ring leader Erich
Koenig had devised a plan to bomb and capture London. In his book The London
Cage - Lieutenant Colonel A.P.Scotland, chief British interrogator of German
POWs said no escape story was "more daring in concept, more fantastic, more
ambitious, more hopelessly fanatical".
The 28 were transferred to POW Camp 21 Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland. ("The cream
of the Nazis, and the more troublesome of the POWs, were sent to Comrie which
was a maximum security camp. Being men of single, narrow purpose, the Nazis
had turned the camp into a little slice of Hitler's Germany, complete with its
evils and absurdities. Those whose belief in National Socialism was lukewarm
or non-existent, or who did not give the Hitler salute and Heil-Hitler every
other sentence were marked men.")
A POW who hated Hitler and was not afraid to show it was Feldwebel (Sergeant-Major)
Wolfgang Rosterg. He was a camp interpreter at Devizes and was one of the 28
transferred to Comrie. Escape ring leader, Erich Koenig believed that Wolfgang
Rosterg had given the escape away at Devizes and that he'd only been transferred
to Comrie to act as an undercover man. One evening, eight of the POWs from Devizes,
beat Wolfgang Rosterg in his Hut 4, before dragging him semi-conscious to the
bath house building where they hung him.
Six months later, the eight Nazis, were sent to London to answer for the murder
of Wolfgang Rosterg at Comrie. The court took place in the large drawing-room
of No. 8 Kensington Palace Gardens, the requisitioned home of a margarine millionaire.
The 8 POWs:
Herzig
Wunderlich
Klein
Kurt Zuchlsdorff
Josep Mertins
Joachim Palme-Goltz
Heintz Brueling
Erich Koenig
All pleaded not guilty. They
were represented by solicitors, Captain Roger Willis (Later His Honour Judge
Willis of Bloomsbury County Court, London) and Major R.Evans.
Wunderlich, Herzig, and Klein were acquitted.
At 8 o'clock on the 6th October 1945, Zuchlsdorff, Mertins, Palme-Goltz, Brueling
and Koenig were marched to Pentonville Prison in North London and executed.
Only Mertens was said to have expressed regret for the crime.
Camp 96: Wolseley Road Rugeley,
Statffordshire.
In thick fog, thirteen POWS escaped. In the uproar that followed the discovery,
only the guard commander's threat to shoot halted a rush at the gate by POWs
armed with shovels !
Camp 112: Doonfoot, Ayr
97 Italian POWs tunnelled to freedom in December 1944. But within a short time
93 were back in custody. When the recapture was nearly complete, the police
were notified that 4 POWs were still free; soldier Pirisinu, and 3 naval officers
Gianoli, Corini, Foglia. The 4 POWs were eventually caught but nobody ever informed
the police, so according to police records these POWs are still free !
One of the docile Italian POWs, an in-offensive motor mechanic from Turin found
conditions hard to bear and early in 1945, wrote a scribbled note before hanging
himself with a canvas belt. "I have never been anyone's enemy. Perhaps
for that reason, the burden is heavier on me. Today, however, I feel that
I hate Fascism, which has been the cause of my country's downfall. Long live
England and her great people !"
Camp 194 Council House, Penkridge,
Staffordshire (main road between Stafford and Wolverhampton)
13 POWs cut the wire in very foggy conditions. As soon as they were free they
split up into small parties. But two were caught in Wolverhampton, two
in Walsall, two in Derby, 4 single-handedly by a police office who tricked them
in to believing he was taking them to get a lift when their stolen car ran out
of petrol and two in Liverpool. The thirteenth man, whose believed intention
was to head for Liverpool and stow aboard a ship, was never returned to the
camp and today it is not clear whether this officer succeeded in getting away
A later tunnel was suspected but couldn't be located by guards until the secret
was eventually deliberately given away (under a bed in Hut 4) by the German
camp choirmaster. The planned break out was to have been for 100+ POWs. The
nerve of the choirmaster cracked under the pressure / fear of being found out
and was making his way rather hurriedly towards the gates. He was spotted and
after a short chase he made it through the gates and was transferred to another
camp for his safety !
Camp 176: Glen Mill, Oldham Lancashire
4 prisoners hid on a sports ground
by hiding in a hole in a mound of earth which was being used to construct a
tennis court. Before going on to the sports ground the POWs had to hand in an
identity tag at a small window to a British guard. It was his job to put the
tag on to a hook on a board. The board would then serve as an instant roll call
as to who was on the sports field and who wasn't. However, the British guard,
bored with his mundane task, was easily exploited by a POW who pretended to
be helpful by collecting the tags off his fellow POWs and hand them in as one
bunch (shielding the view from the window), thus allowing the concealment of
more POWs going on to the field than tags had been handed in ! The POWs lay
on the field until dark and then cut the wire but they were soon caught and
the British guard did 3 months in the "Glass house" for neglect of duty !
Nine POWs managed to start a more
ambitious escape attempt a few months later by bullying Lagerfuehrer Schaffer
to have his office used as the start of the tunnel entrance. In his office
were the crates of cigarettes which were issued to the POWs and underneath these
was deemed the ideal place to conceal a tunnel. Guard suspicions were aroused
when the request for light bulbs suddenly went up and procedures were changed
whereby the broken bulb had to be accounted for, before a new one was issued.
Thus the tunnel soon became dimly lit and in the poor light a POW, in his confined
space wielded his home made pick straight through a water main connecting the
mill to the town supply. The two POWs were then in immediate danger. If they
did not get out of the tunnel quickly, not only would they drown but they could
also have been electrocuted by the tunnel lighting system. The only consolation
of an otherwise well masterminded project was that the tunnel would have ended
in disaster anyway. The tunnel had gone off course and was heading under a road
which would have collapsed under the weight of a car or lorry.
Escape Attempts From Other Camps In Great Britain...CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE