Читать книгу Dachau to Dolomites - Tom Wall - Страница 15

CHAPTER FOUR

TRAITORS

Sachsenhausen, March 1944

In the months following Stalin’s son’s death, a number of new prisoners arrived in Sonderlager ‘A’. They included two Polish RAF men and a group of former Red Army officers. They were joined later by an extraordinary group of British officers, a number of them survivors of The Great Escape. The first British arrival was Captain Peter Churchill, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer who had been captured in the company of his French fellow operative and lover, Odette Sansom, while attempting to build a resistance network in the south of France. In the hope that it would save both of them, they conspired to tell their Gestapo interrogators that he was related to Winston Churchill and that they were married. Despite initial German scepticism and repeated gruelling interrogations, the deception worked, at least for Churchill, and now considered a potential hostage, he was given the status of a special prisoner. Sansom, however, continued to be treated by the Gestapo as a French Résistant and spy. She was tortured and sentenced to be executed, although fortunately this was never carried out.

Churchill, on the basis of his assumed relationship with the British Prime Minister, was dispatched to Sachsenhausen. He must have feared what was in store for him given the reputation of that camp, but he was relieved when shown his new abode. He later described the Sonderlager he was escorted to as a ‘haven’ set within the desert of suffering that was Sachsenhausen. As he was admiring the tree-enclosed compound, a tall person with unruly red hair approached and saluted. ‘Sergeant Cushing at your service, Sorr [sic] and welcome to Sonderlager ‘A’.’1

Cushing introduced Churchill to his roommate Andy Walsh and to the two other Irish prisoners in an adjoining room, Patrick O’Brien and John Spence. Cushing asked if Churchill would like tea or a cigarette, to which the bemused officer quipped ‘both’. Within minutes, he sat on his allotted bunk, a teacup in hand, enjoying the first cigarette he had smoked for quite some time. The Irishmen were anxious to please. Churchill was the first British officer they had encountered since Friesack. How would they explain their presence here, and more particularly in Friesack? Would they be regarded as traitors? Since Stalingrad and the Allied invasion of southern Italy, it had become evident that the tide of war had turned in favour of the Allies and, with the prospect of victory, the thoughts of the former Friesack men would have begun to focus on their post-war reputations. The reaction of these officers to their tale of officer-sanctioned feigned collaboration would be important. It could make the difference between joyous liberation and court martial at war’s end.

First impressions were important and, as the Captain was made comfortable, Cushing and Walsh told him about their time in Friesack. Churchill was given to understand that it was their commanding officer, John McGrath, who suggested they enrol for training with the Germans in order to double-cross them. This of course was misleading, for, as we have learned, Cushing had already volunteered before McGrath’s arrival in that camp, but a little muddling of the timescales would help to deflect suspicion. No matter, Churchill was charmed by the two Irishmen. Following months of solitary confinement, he delighted in their brogue-infused storytelling. He believed them, although his confidence in them was not to be shared by later British arrivals.

A number of the recently arrived Russian prisoners were now sharing a hut with the Irish quartet. They had been placed there following the death of Stalin’s son and Kokorin’s departure. The group included generals who had apparently turned traitor and allied themselves with the Nazis. In the rapid encircling movements that characterised the 1941 German invasion, almost 900,000 Soviet troops were taken prisoner. (In total, 5.7 million were captured by the Germans or their allies during the war, more than half of whom died in captivity.2) Nazi racial theory, and the excuse that the Soviet Union had not ratified the Geneva Convention, contributed to mass murder, cruel exploitation and the fatal neglect of Russian prisoners. Nevertheless, the Nazis were always on the lookout for prestigious prisoners, including high-ranking officers, who might prove to be useful to them. Subsequently, when the German military began to experience serious manpower losses themselves, consideration was given to the recruitment of Russian prisoners into the German war machine. The most significant collaborator was Andrei Vlasov, a decorated Red Army General, who was allowed to establish a ‘Russian Liberation Army’, recruited from Russian prisoners of war. Another important General to agree to work with the Germans was Ivan Bessonov, who now shared accommodation with the Irish group in Sachsenhausen.

Bessonov, a stocky, crude, arrogant, but clever man from the Urals, had been a senior NKVD general. (The NKVD was the Soviet Secret Police, later rebranded as the KGB.) When captured in July 1941 he faced summary execution as Hitler had ordered that all captured political commissars be shot. To save himself, he immediately adopted an anti-Stalinist stance and volunteered to work for the Nazis. The tactic worked and he became an important Nazi collaborator. He had inside knowledge of Stalin’s military and security apparatus and he was more than willing to share all he knew with the Nazis. He also had first-hand knowledge of the terror wrought by the arrests and executions in Russia in the years preceding the war: first-hand because he, as a NKVD general, would have been an agent of that terror. He would also have feared becoming a victim, for the secret police themselves were not immune from being purged. Thousands of NKVD personnel were arrested in the late 1930s after the arrest and execution of two secret police chiefs in 1936 and 1939. The wily Bessonov escaped these purges, just as he managed to escape execution after his capture by the Germans.

Even judged against the standards of the NKVD, Bessonov was an obnoxious individual. He is believed to have been instrumental in having his Red Army commanding officer arrested in order to take over his command.3 Later, while working for the Germans, he was implicated in the execution of a fellow Russian POW who tried to escape.4 Although he refused to become involved with General Vlasov’s ‘Russian Liberation Army’, this was because he believed he should have been put in charge of it.5 The role he was assigned by the Germans was to recruit Soviet POWs into anti-Communist partisan units that would be trained to operate behind Soviet lines. For a time, the Germans appeared to have considered him as a potential Russian Quisling, appointing him head of ‘The Political Centre for the Struggle against Bolshevism’.6 In this role he was fond of imagining himself as the ruler of a new Russia, but he ran afoul of his German bosses when, according to himself, he was overheard declaring ‘as if I’d give the Ukraine to these bastards’.7 Despite this, he may have continued to advise the SS on their anti-partisan tactics while in Sachsenhausen.

Bessonov, learning of Churchill’s presence and believing that he was a cousin of the British Prime Minister, used Cushing and Walsh as emissaries in a bizarre scheme that he wanted put to the Englishman. As conveyed by the Irishmen, he suggested that Captain Churchill allow himself to be parachuted back to England in order to try to convince his ‘cousin’ Winston to allow British paratroopers to accompany Bessonov’s renegade recruits in a parachute drop near one of the large Soviet gulags. The idea was that they would release the prisoners and recruit the fittest into an anti-Stalinist force that could eventually overthrow the Stalinist regime. Self-survival was almost certainly Bessonov’s primary motivation for suggesting this absurd plan: liberation by the Red Army would lead to his certain execution, so his only hope was that the Western Allies might change sides also. Peter Churchill listened to this proposal with mounting incredulity before declining the offer.8

One could be forgiven for seeing Bessonov’s intrigues as nothing more than the delusional ravings of a renegade officer. His proposal had no chance of being put into practice, but it was not entirely implausible. There were close to three million prisoners in Soviet Gulags at the outbreak of the war and Bessonov knew the location of many of these forced labour camps. Before his fall from favour, a dozen of his men, wearing NKVD uniforms, had been parachuted into the Komi region of Siberia, but they were quickly captured and executed.9 It’s doubtful that he would have had the proposal put to Peter Churchill without some level of encouragement from the SS, on whom the plan would depend. Of course, it was delusional to think that when victory seemed assured the British, and more especially the Americans, would ever consider allying themselves with Germany against the Soviet Union. But it was a delusion shared by many in the Nazi leadership, not least by Himmler, virtually to the war’s end.10 It is largely for this reason that some of the characters depicted in this book became hostages; to be used as leverage in negotiations with this in mind. Peter Churchill, as we will see, was not the last of the British Officers to be presented with an offer of a flight out of Germany in an attempt to achieve a cessation of hostilities on the Western front.

Bessonov had another reason for attempting to involve Churchill in this scheme. It provided him with the chance of reviving his standing with the Nazi authorities. But why did Cushing and Walsh agree to get involved? It seems from Peter Churchill’s account that they were disappointed with his rejection of the proposal.11 As noted in the previous chapter, Cushing, was anti-Communist, but it’s likely his motivation had more to do with his own self-survival. He might have been considering a contingency plan, in the event that their story about pretend collaboration wasn’t believed. An alliance between Germany and Britain, were it ever to come about, would remove any prospect of them being accused of collaboration, for then the Germans would no longer be the enemy. Certainly, it is not beyond the ingenuity of Cushing to have considered the fail-safe benefits of such an unlikely eventuality.

Major General Pyotr Privalov, another of the Russians present, was very different to Bessonov. A refined and decorated officer, commander of the 15th Rifle Corps of the Red Army, he had been seriously wounded before being captured in December 1942 when his car was ambushed in Eastern Ukraine.12 Under interrogation, he indicated a willingness to work for the Germans, although in his case this seems to have been nothing more than a stratagem for escape. Following one unsuccessful escape attempt, he was transferred to Sachsenhausen. Privalov was a cultured man, although taciturn and hampered by his lack of German which was the lingua franca among the different nationalities in the camp. Although he was the ranking officer, it was Bessonov who was dominant among the Soviet prisoners: his burly physique and over-bearing manner allowed him to maintain his fearsome NKVD status, notwithstanding the changed circumstances. The other Russians present were Lieutenant Colonel Victor Brodnikov, who is believed to have worked for the Germans under Bessonov,13 and Lieutenant Nikolay Russchenko, a former reserve office who was captured during fighting near Leningrad. He claimed to have escaped and led a Russian partisan group in actions behind German lines. When recaptured, he was tortured, but kept denying any involvement with the resistance.14 Acting as orderly to the officers was a Soviet soldier, Fyoder Ceredilin, who had spent time in a Soviet gulag before the war.

In uncomfortably close proximity to the Russians were two young Polish RAF officers, Jan Izycki and Stanislaw Jensen. They were flying a Wellington Bomber when it was shot down over France a year previously. Jensen, the pilot, managed to crash land the plane in a field and they both managed to drag themselves clear of the burning wreck. Izycki, the navigator, suffered serious burns to his face which his full beard now only partly obscured. His hands were also badly burned. When captured, they sought medical attention, but Izycki’s wounds didn’t save him from a severe beating.15 The Poles tended to keep to themselves in the Sonderlager. They both shared the Polish national prejudice against Russians and tried as far as possible to avoid contact with their Soviet neighbours.

A group of Italians had also entered the special compound in late 1943. They had been stationed in the Italian embassy in Berlin when the post-Mussolini Italian government changed sides and they, like hundreds of thousands of Italian servicemen, were imprisoned. The officers among them were soon transferred out of Sachsenhausen, leaving behind two orderlies, Amechi and Burtoli, who assumed the roles of cook and servant for the growing number of British officers in the compound.

At some point, Cushing and Walsh approached Peter Churchill again in conspiratorial fashion. They had come to tell him that they had an informer in their midst. They were referring to Lance-Bombardier John Spence, their fellow Irish POW who had taken Murphy’s place within their section of the hut. If, as Cushing and Walsh suspected, Spence was, for whatever reason, currying favour with the Camp Commandant by informing on others, there was a risk that they would be tarnished with the same brush, hence their interest in isolating him and distancing themselves from him. The crimes and betrayals attributed to Spence were numerous. For one, it appears he had volunteered to work on a German Radio Service (Irland Redaktion) that directed propaganda broadcasts to Ireland.

Early in the war, the Germans established propaganda radio stations directed at different countries. The Irish service, which transmitted for only a few hours weekly, directly after Lord Haw-Haw’s talk, initially confined its broadcasts to the Irish language. This was an extraordinary constraint on a propaganda service given that only a very small percentage of the Irish population spoke the language and, as most of those lived in what were then relatively poor communities along the western seaboard, few of them would have owned a radio and the few that did would have had difficulty in picking up the signal.16 The radio talks were delivered by a number of German academics specialising in Irish studies. In charge of the service was Adolf Mahr, who was technically on leave from his position as Director of the National Museum in Dublin. When the radio service expanded in 1941 to include nightly English transmissions, new recruits were sought. Frank Stuart was one of the first to contribute in English.17 Spence was probably recruited around this time also and he operated under the alias ‘Brennan’, although there is no record of him broadcasting under that name.18 Nevertheless, he was a willing collaborator, and the charges against him go much further.

Peter Churchill in his book The Spirit in the Cage didn’t refer to Spence by his real name, using the alias ‘Judd’ in his descriptions of these incidents,19 but there is no doubt that ‘Judd’ was Spence.20 By far the worst accusation made by Churchill is that ‘Judd’, while working at the station and living in Berlin, betrayed some Jewish people who had befriended him by reporting their undercover existence to the Nazis, resulting in their arrest and deportation to an ‘extermination camp’.21 No sources are indicated, but it is probable Churchill heard of this from Cushing or Walsh, who likely came into contact with Spence during their time in Berlin. Another collaborator in the radio centre, Patrick Joseph Dillon, who broadcast under the alias ‘Cadogan’, painted a less dramatic, but no less reprehensible, picture of Spence’s betrayal.

In late April 1943 Dillon, Glasgow-born of Irish background, was a merchant seaman who was captured when his boat was sunk in the Atlantic.22 After disclosing pro-German sympathies, he was taken to the Radio Centre in Berlin in April 1943. In the Irland Redaktion office he was introduced to a Mr Brennan whose real name he later learned was Spence. Spence was assigned to look after Dillon and took him to his lodgings. Dillon claimed that the landlady didn’t want the two men to share a room for some reason and lodged Dillon downstairs in rooms occupied by a German woman, Charlotte Greger. Dillon began a relationship with Greger whose husband, a Jew, was incarcerated in a concentration camp. Dillon, who was anti-Semitic, claimed to have changed his views under her influence and says they had made plans to escape to Switzerland. He says he made the mistake of confiding in Spence, who betrayed him, leading to the Gregers’ arrest. Dillon claimed he then refused to continue with his radio talks unless his lover was freed and she was subsequently released, but soon after five women ‘who used to keep company with Spence’ were arrested following another disclosure to the Gestapo by Spence.23 According to Dillon, Spence then disappeared for a time, but ten days later the Gestapo again came to the house, having been informed by the Irishman that there was a Jew hiding in the accommodation. A Jewish girl, possibly a relative of the woman’s husband, had been secretly living in the house, but was now elsewhere, having been warned to stay away after the earlier arrest. However, this time Dillon and Greger were both arrested; the implication being that this was on suspicion of their joint collaboration in hiding the fugitive.

Although purportedly a witness to, and victim of, Spence’s treachery, Dillon’s testimony must be treated with caution. He gave this account when he was facing post-war charges of renegade activities, so any story that portrayed him as undergoing a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion and helping a Jew to avoid capture is most likely a self-serving invention. His broadcasts, under the pseudonym ‘Cadogan’, were invariably replete with anti-Jewish demagoguery and this continued until at least June 1943, after his supposed conversion by Greger.24 It is even possible that Dillon was attempting to put the blame for his own actions on Spence. Whatever the truth of the matter, the story about Spence betraying some Jewish person or persons had wide currency and, for this reason, and because he was believed to be acting as an informer in Sachsenhausen, he was disliked, distrusted and shunned. It is not clear why Spence ended up in Sonderlager ‘A’. Dillon says that he was told that he had been arrested near the Swiss frontier, which would suggest that he was attempting to escape Germany.25

Spence didn’t help his cause in Sachsenhausen, for it seems he was rude and disagreeable. He refused to comply with the rudimentary disciplinary codes applying to the lower ranks in the camp, refusing to salute Churchill or obey his orders. As indicated, he was believed to be a stool pigeon who informed the Camp Commandant, Anton Keindl, about fellow prisoners and even SS guards who were sometimes incautious in what they said to prisoners. He was suspected of reporting a young SS guard who told Andy Walsh that he listened to the BBC in the guard room at night and advised Walsh how he might do the same.26 Listening to enemy broadcasts, although not uncommon towards the end of the war, was a serious offence and encouraging a prisoner to do so could have led to the guard being shot. The Camp Commandant launched an investigation during which prisoners were asked if they had listened to the BBC. All denied it of course; Churchill was notified in advance by one of the guards of Keindl’s visit and he sent Cushing and Walsh on a mission to alert all the prisoners. The guard was exonerated.27

Peter Churchill, who was at this time the only British officer present, decided to take action against Spence. He told Cushing and Walsh to summon Spence, but he refused to leave his quarters. Accompanied by the two gleefully expectant Irishmen, Churchill marched officiously to confront Spence. Churchill demanded he explain why he refused to obey his order. Spence deigned to remain blasé and seated until Churchill hoisted him up by the lapels, slapped a cigarette from his month and struck him with such force that he sent him ‘spinning into the corner of the room’.28 A further assault followed before the subdued Spence had his lance corporal’s insignia torn from his tunic. According to Churchill, Spence promised to conform, but later complained to Keindl that he had been assaulted. Churchill was shown a copy of the complaint by a friendly SS guard. In retribution, the Englishman ordered that there was to be no social contact with any of the other prisoners. After three weeks, Spence, again according to Churchill, was remorseful and sought an interview. He was ordered, as a penalty, to surrender his next Red Cross parcel to the Russians, and, more ominously for him, sign a confession drawn up by Churchill. This document dealt with his German propaganda work, his snooping on fellow prisoners and, most damning of all, it contained an admittance that he was ‘instrumental in the apprehension of over a dozen Jews, who in all probability have been murdered in the Extermination Camps to which I knew they would be sent’.29 Churchill promised him that, in the event of Spence behaving properly during the remainder of the war, he would destroy the papers. Spence apparently signed the document and Cushing, Walsh and a recently arrived Free-French RAF captain, Ray Van Wymeersch, witnessed it.

It is difficult to believe that anyone would confess to treason and complicity in murder on the basis of no more pressure than that of social isolation. In his book, Churchill portrays Spence as having rowed with everyone in the camp before his (Churchill’s) arrival, with the result that ‘no one would have him as a room-mate’.30 Isolation, therefore, was nothing new to him. A greater level of ‘persuasion’ would surely have had to have been applied. And, if Churchill really believed Spence was implicated in such a heinous crime, why would he (Churchill) conditionally promise not to mention it after the war was over? Churchill clearly over-egged the story for his book, for although he would have known about the ‘extermination camps’ when wrote his story, he was unlikely to have knowledge of them as a prisoner in 1944.

Soon after these events, Peter Churchill was joined by other British officers, four of them survivors of The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III POW camp at Sagan. The first to arrive was Wing Commander Harry Day, generally known as ‘Wings’. He had been captured after being shot down while leading a squadron on a reconnaissance mission over western Germany only a few weeks into the war. He was badly burned and was the only member of his crew to survive. Middle-aged, tall and slim, he was respected and liked by fellow inmates in the various camps he was placed in, despite having a tendency to be abrupt at times.31 Immensely brave, he had been decorated when, as a young marine officer during the First World War, he repeatedly went below the deck of his torpedoed ship to rescue two trapped and injured crewmen. He made light of his gallantry by claiming he had only gone below to retrieve the ship’s store of liquor.32 The other early arrival was the previously mentioned Major Johnnie Dodge. The American-born Dodge, from a privileged background, was the only one among a British contingent that subsequently came to include two Churchills who was actually a relation of Winston Churchill: the connection was through his mother’s second marriage. Like Day, he was a decorated veteran of the First World War. The next to arrive was Flight Lieutenant Bertram James, usually called ‘Jimmy’. A handsome man, he had been shot down while flying his Wellington Bomber over the Netherlands in June 1940. After being greeted on entry into the camp by Day, James asked who else was in the Sonderlager. Day replied: ‘Well, there are a few renegade Irishmen who played the part of collaborators for a while – we’re still not sure which of them can be trusted.’33

James was, according to Dowse, with whom he was to share a room in the compound, ‘reserved, shy and quite’.34 Flight Lieutenant Sydney Dowse, a fellow escaper from Stalag Luft III, arrived soon after James. Blond, tall and handsome, and known as the ‘Laughing Boy’ for his cheerful good humour,35 his Spitfire had been shot down while on a reconnaissance mission over the French coast near Brest in August 1941. He had managed to ditch his plane in the sea and swim ashore without attracting attention, but must have been charmed and dismayed in equal measure to find a group of young French women waiting to greet him on the beach calling out excitedly ‘l’Aviator Anglais.’36

These four, plus the previously mentioned Frenchman, Van Wymeersch, were among the seventy-six prisoners who escaped from Stalag Luft III on 24 March 1944. All but three of the escapees were recaptured and fifty of these were murdered by the Nazis. The Frenchman was almost certainly destined to be among the victims, but through good luck and ingenuity he managed to evade execution. While awaiting transport from a prison in Berlin after his recapture, he observed a group of civilian prisoners being marched elsewhere and joined up with them without being noticed. He ended up in Buchenwald before the resulting confusion led to his transfer to Sachsenhausen.37 At the time of their arrival in Sachsenhausen, none of the Sagan escapees knew about the murder of their colleagues. They only learned about it when they read a report in Deutsche Allgemeine Zietung which they were regularly supplied with. The newspaper did not refer directly to the crime, but it was evident from a comment that mocked a statement by Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, condemning the killings.

Day was especially shaken by the news. Although he wouldn’t then have known the list of victims, he would have assumed they included some close friends. Roger Bushell, with whom Day had planned the Sagan escape, was one. Day’s escape partner, the Polish RAF officer Pavel Tobolski, was also among those murdered. So was his close friend Mike Casey. He had first known the Irishman Casey from 57 Squadron which Day commanded and they had met again in captivity.38 They had a lot in common; both were sons of the Empire. Day, whose father was a senior administrator, was born in Sarawak in Borneo, while Casey had been born in India where his father was a high-ranking officer in the Indian police force. They were both shipped home as children to be educated. Day went to Haileybury, a public school in Hertford in England, while Casey was sent to Clongowes Wood in Ireland before moving to Stonyhurst in Lancashire.39

For Dowse, the terrible news would have reminded him of the harrowing scene that occurred when he and his escape partner Stanislaw Krol, a Polish RAF Officer, were being separated after their recapture. Krol had appealed to Dowse ‘Don’t leave me! I’ve had it if you leave me! I’m finished!’40 Dowse had no choice in the matter; he was being escorted to Berlin for Gestapo interrogation. He tried to reassure Krol, telling him they would take him back to Sagan, believing at the time that that was likely. Dowse, after reading the report, would have guessed that Krol’s worst fears were borne out. He was, in fact, shot shortly after Dowse’s departure.

A sixth British officer, the last to arrive in Sonderlager ‘A’, and by far the most eccentric, was Lieutenant Colonel Jack Churchill. Although from Surrey with no obvious Scottish connections, he had assumed a Scottish identity and included in his battle kit a Scottish claymore sword, bagpipes, a longbow and set of arrows. A commando officer, he was the stuff of comic strip legend. He is said to have been the last British soldier to kill an enemy with an arrow; his son claims he killed a German soldier with an arrow near the village of L’Epinette, east of Paris in 1940.41 It would not have been beyond his capabilities for he had previously represented Britain in pre-war archery competitions. He led commando actions in Norway, France, Sicily and Yugoslavia for which he would be awarded the Military Cross. He would sometimes lead troops into battle playing Scottish martial airs on his bagpipes. The Claymore sword was not just for show either; in the Sicily landings he led an assault with his sword drawn using it to subdue a platoon of German soldiers. He was captured after being rendered unconscious by a grenade explosion while leading a group of Titoist partisans and a platoon of British commandos in battle on an Island off the Croatian coast.42 Like Peter Churchill, the Germans assumed him to be a relative of Winston Churchill, although, in his case, he never pretended to be so.

Life in the Sonderlager was not unpleasant most of the time. The prisoners were reasonably well fed. They were on SS rations, being provided with the same quality and quantity of food as their gaolers. They did better when Red Cross parcels arrived. Occasionally, the two Italian orderlies, Bartoli and Ameche, who shared their accommodation – Ameche was a cousin and look-alike of the then famous Hollywood actor Don Ameche – would prepare a communal meal using the contents of the parcels. The Russians were sometimes invited. Bessonov would wolf down his food, spitting out whatever bits he found disagreeable, much to the silent disapproval of his fellow Russians.43 During the day, the occupants could wander about within their compound. There were German newspapers and books to read. German language lessons were provided by Peter Churchill. Card and board games were played and sing-songs occupied many evenings, with Cushing to the fore. Bessonov gave lectures in which he critiqued the Soviet Union and expounded on his formula for a constitutional framework for a ‘free’ Russia. Rather surprisingly, these were attended by Harry Day and John Dodge, with Peter Churchill translating Bessonov’s poor German. Dodge was acquainted with the Soviet Union, having been arrested by the Cheka – forerunners of the NKVD – and detained for a week in December 1921 on suspicion of using a trade visit as cover for spying,44 an experience that must have contributed to his subsequent staunch anti-Communism.

A large wall map was fashioned from several sheets of paper on which Cushing regularly marked up the progress of the war, based on information gleaned from newspapers and radio broadcasts. An outdoor running track was marked out and a long jump pit was dug. A ball was made from rags and paper for netball games. Such exercises allowed the inmates to become fit and bronzed over the summer months.45 None of this could compensate for isolation from family. No communication was permitted with the outside world. They could not write or receive letters from home. They were all Nacht und Nebel (‘Night and Fog’) prisoners. Not knowing if their parents were alive or dead, how wives or children were fairing, and knowing that their families were left to wonder if they were alive or dead all contributed to bouts of depression. This was more problematic for the older prisoners like Day and Dodge, both of whom were married with children. For Day, there was the added difficulty of knowing from earlier letters that his marriage was in difficulty. Depression and mental breakdown were common in the POW camps46 and Day himself had a breakdown while in Sagan in 1941.47 The Irish orderly, O’Brien, is rarely mentioned in memoirs, leaving the impression that he had withdrawn into himself after his arrest and interrogation in Berlin.

There were frequent reminders of the contrast between the relative benign conditions enjoyed by the Sonderlager inmates and the privations endured by ordinary Sachsenhausen camp prisoners. Once a week the group were escorted to the main compound of the camp for a shower, which involved them passing a large Appell Platz (‘roll call square’) with its ominous gallows. Here they could see half-starved figures in their striped camp uniforms being marched continuously around the square carrying heavy backpacks loaded with stones. The purpose of the exercise was to test new designs for army boots.48 The marches were continued to the point of the collapse of the prisoners or the footwear. Suicides within the main camp were common. Often during the night the special prisoners would be awoken by machine-gun fire, an indication that some poor soul was suffering the same suicidal fate as Yakov Dzhugashvili. During the day, smoke from the crematorium was a constant reminder of the murderous nature of the camp.49

They had been told on entering Sachsenhausen that there was no possibility of escape. The trustee’s they encountered told them the only way out was via the crematorium chimney. Such warnings only spurred on the serial escapers; they had attempted numerous escapes prior to the mass breakout from Stalag Luft III and they were spoiling to attempt another. They had to try to escape again, it was their duty to attempt to they told themselves. And it served another purpose, it relieved the boredom of captivity and allowed them to dream of an early homecoming.