Lt Michael Duncan of the 4th Battalion Ox & Bucks Light Infantry wrote a vivid account of his battle at Cassel and captivity in Watou on 30th May 1940 in his book ‘Underground from Posen‘, first published in 1954.
Interestingly, Duncan was accompanied by Capt Harold Westley and Lt Ronald Baxter of 367 Battery, 140 Rgt RA on his escape from Oflag VB. Of the three, only Duncan managed a succesful home run as both Westley and Baxter were recaptured on the Swiss border.
Michael Duncan’s MI9 Report documenting his capture at Watou and subsequent captivity including his escape from Oflag VB in 1941
Here I’ve reproduced the first part of the relevant chapter ‘Into the Bag‘ that describes the nightmare journey taken from Watou to Oflag VII Laufen in Bavaria:
CHAPTER IV: ‘INTO THE BAG’
THE TROOPS to whom we surrendered were Waffen S.S. -one of the enemy’s crack tank units and a very different body of men from their political counterparts. They treated their prisoners with reasonable courtesy, quickly collected the wounded for treatment and gave the dead a decent burial. All was done quietly and efficiently with none of the shouting, bullying and general bestiality which seemed natural to their second line troops and which, to the prisoners, was soon to become the normal and expected behaviour of all Germans.
As the parties were rounded up, they were collected into a field where already that dazed listlessness-the common expression of all prisoners-had settled on the earlier arrivals. Hunger and exhaustion prevented any other feeling than a kind of numb misery, increased by the realisation that, in a world of armed men, we no longer carried arms, no longer had the right to carry arms and consequently were from thenceforth persons of no account whatsoever.
When a party of about two hundred was assembled we were started on the long, weary march that took us down into France and finally ended in the prison camps of Germany. The first day’s march took us to Endeghem, where we spent the night locked in the church. There were no sanitary arrangements of any kind and, as all seating had been removed, there was nothing to lie on but the bare, cold stones. We had not slept for forty hours and had been marching or fighting continuously and without food or drink for the past twenty-four so that comfort meant nothing. We had, however, only what we stood up in and, in many cases, our uniforms were in rags so that without blanket or greatcoat the cold was intense and, tired though we were, it kept most of us from getting much sleep.
At 5.30 a.m., after a cup of lukewarm ersatz coffee-a nasty brew of burnt acorns and barley-and a few hard biscuits, the march began again. Each foot weighed a ton and our mouths and eyes were permanently full of dust from the incessant German convoys.
The French people brought out buckets of water for us, but we were not allowed to stop for a drink, nor were we given any food. We were so hungry that we searched the ditches in case any scraps of food were to be found amongst the wreckage of war along the route, but there was nothing. So, we tramped on under a burning sun for mile after mile- twenty-five kilometres in all-until, in the evening when we were just about dropping, we reached Therouanne where a large number of prisoners had already arrived.
There we found luxury; straw on the floor, a pump to wash under and, a good, but totally inadequate, meal of potato stew. A night’s sleep greatly improved our condition so that when on the following morning after a mug of so-called coffee but no food, the march started again it was possible to take some interest in what was going on and even to consider the possibility of making a break.
Two officers did, in fact, get away from the column but chances were very few and most of us had sunk into a kind of hopeless torpor in which we seemed to have lost the power of constructive thought and just trudged on like automatons doing whatever we were told. Each successive set of guards became worse than the one before and they seemed to become worse and worse the further we got back.
Late in the afternoon we arrived at Febvin-Palfart, a pretty little village still, despite the war, bright with fresh paint. At the roadside stood the small village church into which all the officers, French and British, were crowded and where, after a while, we were issued with a meal of meat-or rather a hard leathery substitute-potatoes and biscuit. It was the first proper meal that many of us had seen for quite a while and there were some ugly scenes in that church as men’s hunger got the better of their manners. To their credit it must be said that very few of the British officers were involved in the stampede: for the most part they stood aloof and watched, a little scornfully, the others getting all four feet into the trough. After the meal was over we were taken out and rejoined the other ranks in a field across the road where German officers and N.C.O.’s were sitting at tables.
At first we thought that this was for the purpose of checking identities and getting us documented but it was soon clear that we were all to be searched. All over the field there were little furtive movements as each man tried to find a hiding place in his socks, in his boots, even inside his cheeks or elsewhere for such small treasures as he had left but those searchers knew their job and there was little of value that escaped them.
When the search was over the officers were again separated from the other ranks and the two parties marched off separately. The Germans were doing their utmost to foster dislike between the French and the British by giving the former very preferential treatment in everything and it must be admitted that they were largely successful. There was hardly a British soldier on that march who would not happily have slaughtered any one of the Frenchmen. The Germans too lost no opportunity of heaping subtle little indignities on the British of which a typical example occurred that night on our arrival at Frevent.
There were already hundreds of men there with no adequate sanitary arrangements so that the smells and the swarms of flies were indescribable. When a meal was issued to those who could find some utensil into which to put it-it consisted of some very nasty oily soup and a piece of lukewarm fat picked, with his bare and very dirty hand, out of a bucket by a negro while the guards looked on and jeered.
We slept that night in a factory on cotton waste which was comfortable except that it was alive with fleas and the next morning we were roused at 4.45 a.m., with no breakfast, to continue the march. The guards by now had become quite insufferable. I should never have believed that anyone could be so consistently abusive for so long. The average German seemed convinced that, if he shouted loudly enough at you, you would understand. If you failed to do so the first time he screamed, stamped his feet and then lost his temper-when anything might happen.
Usually, we marched for three hours and then had five or ten minutes rest. At first only the French were allowed to lie down at halts and the British had to remain standing, but this was relaxed during the second day and we could all lie down. Ten minutes seemed no time at all after a three-hour spell of marching, and almost before we were down we were being called up again:
“Los! Los!” shouted a guard.
“Aus! Aus!” screamed his pals.
“Schneller!” they all yelled together, waving their rifles, and off we shambled again.
The march on June 2nd was like all the others, except that it was shorter thirteen kilometres-and, about midday, we arrived at Doullens Castle, which in normal times was a girls’ orphanage. There we hoped to be given a meal but received nothing until after three, when we were each given six of the interminable dry biscuits. During the morning’s march I had discovered a small tin of Oxo lying in the ditch by the roadside whilst someone else, on arrival at the castle, had discovered a few small, very green gooseberries.
A fire was soon lit in the courtyard and a meal prepared of a pint of very thin Oxo followed by stewed gooseberries and biscuit, but, as it had to be divided amongst fourteen, it was scarcely a banquet. Another party had found some old potatoes and a piece of bacon rind on a rubbish heap and made a stew of them whilst others made nettle “spinach” and some just ate dandelion leaves.
Late in the afternoon permission was granted to the prisoners to go out, under guard, to a farm to buy milk but, as far as the British prisoners were concerned, it was a worthless concession. Very few of us had succeeded in saving any money from the eyes of the expert searchers and, in any case, as the French prisoners had been allowed out first there was no longer, by the time we reached the farm, any milk to buy.
On the following day we were roused at 6.30 a.m. and marched off, nominally to get a hot breakfast. In fact, we were marched to the far side of the town, given six dry biscuits and then marched back again to the castle where we were given six more-one of those apparently pointless manoeuvres which, even if not expressly designed to do so, are most effective in depressing even the most optimistic. All the biscuits issued were captured British ration biscuits, hard, dry, almost tasteless, but apparently nourishing or we must all have been dead by that time. As it was, we were terribly hungry and the craving for sugar was frightful. We would all have given our souls for a bit of chocolate or a spoonful of jam.
That evening, as we were waiting in trucks to be taken on the next stage of our journey, some German AirForce men who, throughout, seemed a better type and more inclined to be sociable than their army counterparts, got into conversation with us and gave us cigarettes and tobacco. One young lieutenant, apologising for our treatment, pointed out that, as Britain had started the war, the British prisoners must suffer. The French, being the dupes of Britain, could be treated better.
At Cambrai I had a stroke of luck in meeting, by accident, a British private soldier who had been put to work in the local sugar factory. From him I got a small tin of sugar which became my most closely guarded treasure, its contents being issued to a very limited circle of friends in minute spoonsful.
From Cambrai the rest of the journey into Germany, except for one short march from Givet to Beauraing caused by the demolition of a bridge, was done by train but conditions were little, if any, better. The carriages were grossly over- crowded, the heat almost intolerable especially when, sometimes for hours at a time, the train would be left standing in a siding in the sun until the inside became an oven, and always there was the same terrible shortage or, more often, complete absence of food and water. Even had there been room to lie down, sleep would have been impossible.
When Antonio spoke of softening that “. than which what’s harder?” he had never experienced the seats of a continental third-class railway carriage which are of an incredible hardness and the wrong shape.
In these conditions we travelled on across Belgium, through the picture-book country of Luxembourg with its fairy tale capital perched on its rock, across the Moselle, its vineyards strewn with pillboxes and fortifications, and so into Germany to the town of Trier where, on top of the hill outside the town, were the Artillery barracks that were being used as a prison camp. There we spent two days sleeping, cleaning ourselves, trying to patch and darn our tattered uniforms but mostly queueing in the burning sun for such meagre rations as were left after the French and Belgians had had first pick.
On the evening of the second day, we were each given a small piece of bread and sausage and again entrained under the same appallingly cramped conditions. Sleep was virtually impossible, and we were thankful when dawn broke and showed us the lovely Rhine valley with its vineyards and orchards.
It was, however, a mixed blessing and, for the first time, I fully realised the satanic ingenuity of the gods of the Under-world who devised the torments of Tantalus. We were nearly passing out with hunger whilst outside our carriage windows were masses of glorious red cherries and ripening gooseberries to be had for the picking. The sight of the orchards not unnaturally led to a discussion of the exhibition in the church at Febvin Palfart.
“It certainly takes a show like this to bring out a chap’s real character,” said someone and there was a general murmur of agreement with the platitude.
After a few minutes another man spoke:
“No, I don’t agree,” he said.
“Don’t agree with what?”
“That this sort of life brings out a man’s true character. It brings out his basic nature if you like but not his character.”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“I’d say your basic nature’s what you’re born with and what your glands make you. Your character’s what’s laid on top of your basic nature by education, upbringing, experience and so on like a kind of veneer. It’s not surprising if it cracks at times. It’s as unfair to judge a man’s character by his behaviour in a crisis or under prolonged strain as it is to judge him by what he says under an anaesthetic. It’s just useful, for future reference, to know what a man’s basic nature is because I don’t believe he can change that however hard he tries.”
He seemed to be losing the thread of what he was saying and suddenly he burst out: “For God’s sake shut up, Ted, before I do you. Your basic nature’s entirely brutish”-for Ted, sitting in a corner with a faraway look in his eyes, was intoning in a dismal monotone:
“I see waiters in white coats. One of them has a dish full of oysters, the next a roast chicken. I can smell the stuffing and the chipped potatoes…”
and so on until he was on the point of coming to a violent end. Late in the morning we reached Mainz where, in the barracks, our particulars were taken, and we were given a card on which to write home. We were also given a large piece of bread and sausage which, thinking that at last things were looking up, we swallowed at once and it was not until too late that we found that we had eaten our rations for twenty- four hours.
Life on the whole, however, became rather more bearable. The Commandant had spent some time in England, spoke quite fluent English and he did his best for the prisoners within the scope allowed. Meals, although consisting only of potato soup and bread, were at least regular and small amounts of tobacco and ersatz soap could be bought by those with any money to buy them. The night we arrived in Mainz, a French general hanged himself with his braces, probably the only suicide amongst the prisoners and nobody blamed him, but for the remainder the rest and slight improvement in the feeding arrangements were beginning to produce a more cheerful state of mind.
The following day, being a Sunday, a Communion Service was organised and the Germans co-operated to the extent of providing a bottle of white wine and a white loaf. When the time came to Communicate each man looked anxiously at his neighbour to see if he got a larger morsel of bread than he did himself but, apart from this, the service, which was held in a barn, was remarkable for the size of the congregation and the real intensity of emotion. When it was over I discussed the phenomenon with two of my friends, Richard Loveridge and James Lyndon-Price.
“I wonder why it is,” I said, “that we’ve all got religion. When bullets come a bit too close its natural enough to put up a prayer of the ‘Please God don’t let them hit me variety but that’s not religion and it’s not really prayer. That service was something quite different.” “Reaction I expect,” said Dick. “Gratitude that we’ve survived or something like that.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” said Jim Lyndon- Price. “I think religion’s a sort of wall that you can get your back up against when everything else is lost, or, if you feel that way, a kind of friendly shoulder to weep on when you feel the whole world’s being horrid to you. We’ve lost everything, all contact with the world that we knew, and, according to our natures, we’ve run to our respective walls or shoulders.”
“Is that religion?” I asked.
“I think it is,” Jim answered. “A feeling that there’s some- thing greater than anything in this world that we can fall back on. The trouble is that we have to be kicked hard in the pants and have the daylight scared out of us before we realise the need for it.”
“I suppose,” said Dick, “that’s the reason why there’s not much religion in ordinary life-it’s too easy. If parsons could convince people that the old-fashioned fire and brimstone hell -or an equally unpleasant equivalent did exist, they’d get far more people to church.”
“I think so,” agreed Jim. “After all there are only two things that get us out of our natural laziness-hope of gain, whether it’s actual benefit or just a smug, cosy feeling at having been a good boy, or fear of what will happen if you don’t and, fear is usually by far the stronger. Now that no one really believes in a fiery hell the fear side of religion has gone, which is a pity. The spiritualists don’t help either. All the spooks they dig up seem to be nice gentlemanly types who appear to have carried on exactly as they did on earth. If they could produce a few well- authenticated specimens oozing gravy and smelling strongly of singeing there’d soon be a religious revival.”
“Maybe.”
We spent three days in Mainz resting, playing cards and washing our clothes with very inefficient ersatz soap which seemed to leave the clothes many shades blacker than before they were washed. However, they smelt cleaner which, after all, was the main thing. Most intelligent topics of conversation had long since been exhausted and talk tended to revert to schoolboy standard except when matters of vital importance arose such, for instance, as to how to adapt trousers to stomachs which, whether from hunger or the bread and potato diet, were becoming rapidly and alarmingly “pot”.
“Tom.”
“What?”
“How did you make your trousers fit your pot-belly?”
“Moved all the buttons over as far as they’ll go.”
“I’ve done that, but they still won’t meet without the hell of a strain.”
“Slit your trousers down the back then.”
There was a pause and Tom relapsed into his study of the infinite the only thing there was to study. Then:
“Tom.”
“What?”
“No knife. The bastards stole it.”
“Use a razor blade, half-wit. Next time you decide to be a Gefangener for God’s sake bring your nurse.”
“Don’t give me ideas, Tom. I’d almost forgotten that females existed. I haven’t got a razor blade: they took all but one and I broke that moving the buttons.”
In fact, all knives and razors had been confiscated except for a very few that had escaped the search. One of these was produced and the trousers slit down the back. They now met well in the front, but the back was as bad as the front had been.
“What you want to do, sonny,” said Tom, “is to make some nice little holes down each side of the slit, thread some string through and lace them up like corsets. It’ll give you a beautiful through figure.”
Again, Tom surveyed the infinite and there was heavy breathing as the amateur tailor laboriously poked holes through his trousers with a pencil and sewed the holes open with a primitive button-hole stitch. After a while he looked round helplessly:
“Tom.”
“What now?”
“No string.”
“Don’t be so damned silly. There must be a bit of string somewhere,”
and then, remembering,
“no, I suppose not. Haven’t you got a spare bootlace?”
“No, Tom, I’m a bad soldier. Have you?”
“No.”
But a spare bootlace was eventually produced and another of life’s major problems successfully solved. It was a problem that confronted us all and we all had to make some effort at amateur tailoring though some just undid their buttons and left it at that.
On the third day in Mainz, we were again paraded and marched to the station where, in accordance with the classic formula of “Hommes 40 Chevaux 8“-a formula laid down by someone who must surely have hated his fellow men and who cannot have had much love for horses-we were packed into box cars, fifty to a car, the extra ten over formula being, presumably, to ensure that we did not rattle.
Our particular car had on the floor a thick layer of grease- it might have been margarine or lard but it was too dark to see, for the only light came in through two small holes high up at one end of the car. The same two holes also provided the only ventilation so that the atmosphere became remarkably stuffy, particularly after we had been standing for a few hours in a siding under a hot sun, and we took it in turns to stand at the ventilation holes to get a bit of fresh air. It was quite impossible to lie down and only half could sit at a time so that one half stood crowded at one end of the truck whilst the other half dozed sitting, as best they could, on the hard grease-covered floor.
There were, of course, no sanitary arrangements so it was lucky that some of us had been able to keep our steel helmets. Before starting we had been given a hunk of bread and a piece of sausage the sort of thing that a workman would eat for his elevenses-and, although all of us had acquired some sort of container for water, very few of them held more than a pint so that the usual acute hunger and thirst were added to the other, comparatively minor, discomforts.
We travelled in these trucks for two nights and two days across Germany, arriving, on the second day, at the village of Laufen-ob, nineteen kilometres from Salzburg, where the old Bishop’s palace, under its new guise of Oflag VII C/H, was to be our home for the next nine months.
The palace was a large building, five stories high, built of stone and brick round two central courtyards and standing on the banks of the river Salzach. In peacetime it must have been quite a beauty spot, but now it had been converted into a forbidding-looking gaol. For most of the time that we were in Laufen I kept some sort of diary and extracts from this, being written on the spot and at the time, will probably give the best indication of the utter futility of our first months in prison. Often, we used to envy the other ranks because, although their lot was, in many ways, harder than ours, they could at least get outside the barbed wire and go out to work on the farms, in the quarries and elsewhere. For the officers all work was forbidden and even parole walks the not allowed so that we had no opportunity at all of seeing the world outside except through a six-foot-thick screen of tangled barbed wire.
Later on, of course, things improved as the Red Cross got properly organised and when games and books -especially textbooks- arrived but during much of the first year we had nothing: no books or papers, only one or two packs of very woolly cards and nothing in the remotely near future to look forward to or to plan for.
It was a life of the most utter emptiness and boredom in which, as in all primitive states, food was the all-absorbing topic.
“On arrival,” I wrote, “we spent the whole morning in the broiling sun in the courtyard where we were issued with a mug, bowl, knife, spoon and fork. We were then given a bowl of coffee with milk and saccharine which was the best drink we had had since capture and a tin loaf of black bread which was already green with mould and which was to last for five days. We were also given a small cake of soap to last a month and a stick of shaving soap to last three months. We then had the indignity of having our heads shaved and all looked and felt absurd. The official reason for this was to facilitate delousing but this would have been more convincing had they also shaved off our beards which, as we had no razors, had by that time reached handsome proportions and tickled abominably.”
Again, we were searched and all letters, papers, fountain pens, knives and money left by the previous searchers were taken from us but this time they gave us a receipt-for what it’s worth. I have a rooted objection to having my pockets turned out by German privates.
After being issued with identity discs we were sent for intensive questioning and then, at last, we were given a meal-some sauerkraut, a piece of sausage and two boiled potatoes. In the afternoon we were deloused-very necessary too: our clothes were baked and we had a hot shower and a medical examination. This was the first time that I had been able to undress completely since leaving Alsemberg a month ago. We were then herded into a room for the night; two hundred of us in a room about forty feet by twenty and no windows would open. We were given beds exactly like battery brooders on a chicken farm, three tiers high and in batches of twelve-I wonder if chickens hate it too. There was no room to move, and the atmosphere was awful.
They gave us no blankets but fortunately I had managed to keep the one that I had picked up on the road. Food was a bowl of spinach and two potatoes-good but not filling.
“June 16th. For breakfast we had a mug of ersatz coffee. We were paraded at 08.30 and divided into rooms by ranks. Ours is a room about forty-five feet long by twenty wide and in it are ninety beds-still in batteries and three tiers high but in groups of six instead of twelve. There is one window at the end and two small ones on one side. Between the ends of the beds is an eight-foot central passage in which are eight tables, about sixty stools and twenty-seven cupboards, leaving no room at all. Altogether there are forty of us in the room so that we are not unduly crowded at night and at meals we fit in fairly well. I, luckily, have got a top berth between the door and the stove so that I can get above the crowd and have a little air and, if they light the stove in winter, I shall be fairly warm. The ‘beds’ are just wooden frames with a palliasse and pillows filled with wood shavings and they have issued us with one sheet, one blanket (thin and small) and a blanket cover-a kind of large linen bag into which you put the blanket so that the cover acts as top sheet and counterpane. Outside there are three courtyards and a field two hundred yards round for our exercise: not much for four hundred officers. There is absolutely nowhere one can be alone for a minute. I shall hate my fellow men before long. The whole building and field are surrounded by an eight-foot high, double-banked barbed wire fence which is floodlit at night and at every corner there is a sentry post with machine gun and searchlight. All courtyards and walls of buildings are also floodlit and there are sentries on most of the roofs.”
“June 17th. This is the worst part of our captivity to date. The marching was frightful but at least we were doing something: now we have nothing to do except kill time between meals that are totally inadequate. At Mainz we were told that we should be paid 27 Rm. a week on arrival at Laufen and that we should be allowed to write three letters and four cards home per month. Both of these were fallacies. They refuse to pay us at all until June 21st and they have decided to cut our pay from 27 Rm. to 13.50 Rm. per ten days instead of per week. We are actually allowed only two letters, each of twenty-two lines, and two cards per month.”
“June 19th. We were supposed to have margarine for tea today, but it failed to arrive. Investigations showed that our Quarter- master had accused the German orderly of stealing our rations. The orderly complained to the Commandant with the result that the Quartermaster was severely reprimanded and threatened with solitary confinement for ‘Unbecoming conduct towards a member of the German armed forces’ and we lost our marg. ration pour encourager les autres. Roll-call, which takes place every morning at 09.30, is becoming rather tedious and often takes as much as an hour owing to the Germans’ peculiar inability to count. They also give out fatuous notices: this morning’s effort was ‘British officers are not allowed to lean out of windows as it is dangerous for them; if they do so the sentries have orders to shoot’- thereby, no doubt, greatly lessening the danger. The days seem terribly long. We have no books or papers; we can only walk in a circle of two hundred yards and have not even the energy to do much of that, so we play endless games of cards and become cabbages.
“June 21st. Pay-day at last. We had to queue up to draw our 13.50 Rm., and it was wicked to see the brigadiers and colonels going up to the table to draw their pay and saluting the paying- out lieutenant as though they were private soldiers. What a difference money makes to life! Sitting behind a pint of beer and smoking my pipe made me feel almost human -even though the beer was not much more than water and the tobacco was of very doubtful origin. Prices of everything are out of all proportion, however, as they give us such a rotten rate of exchange-only 9 Rm. to the £ . One biscuit costs sixpence, a small barrel of Bismark herrings £25 and a bag of walnuts £15. The rate of exchange is, of course, entirely fictitious and the “money” is specially printed for P.o.W. camps and is not valid outside. We are so hungry, however, that we will pay almost anything we have got for anything that remotely resembles food. We are allowed two cigarettes per day for which we pay 5 Pf. each, the ends being jealously guarded either for smoking in a pipe or for barter. Cigarettes and bread fetch high prices in the barter market. Bread is very rarely in the market at all, but a slice is very occasionally exchanged for two cigarettes. Our 13.50 Rm. are all gone by the second day, leaving us eight lean days in every ten.”
“June 25th. Many more officers have arrived, mostly 51st Division from the Somme, and into our 45 ft. X 20 ft. room they have crowded no less than eighty-five officers. In this room we all sleep, eat and have our being. At night the windows have to be closed for black-out until the German Orderly Officer has been round at about 11.0 p.m. when we can put the lights out. The atmosphere becomes awful: God knows what will happen if an epidemic breaks out. We heard today that the French have packed up. It’s simply infuriating that we have to be out of the war and cannot lift a finger to help. There is absolutely nothing to do and nothing to look forward to in the even remotely near future. Our whole existence centres round food, of which there is lamentably little, pay-day with its promise of beer and cigarettes and bread day when we get our new loaves. When letters and parcels start to arrive we shall have them to look forward to but this will not be for weeks yet. In the meantime, life is entirely empty and useless. Our lack of energy and interest is appalling, and the general depression is increased by our weakness due to lack of food. We are doing what we can to pass the time, and a course of lectures has been arranged on various subjects, anyone who knows anything about them giving the lectures. We are also subscribing 2 Rm. each to buy a library of Tauchnitz books, though Heaven knows when they will arrive. When they do things should improve. Apart from this we play endless games of patience-my old and very woolly pack of cards being in- valuable-poker and bridge. I have also made a ludo board which passes an occasional hour, but all these get very monotonous when done day after day. If only we could get news- papers or have a radio or gramophone-but they are all prohibited.”
“June 29th. Officers have continued to arrive, and we now have ninety men in our room. Conditions are almost unbearable.”
MICHAEL DUNCAN’S MI9 ESCAPE ACCOUNT
Here I’ve reproduced Duncan’s Escape Report from the original documents in the National Archives
M.I.9/S/P.G.(G) 639.
M G Duncan , Lieutenant, 65656. 4th Battalion Oxford & Bucks.
| Reference: | WO 208/3307/26 |
|---|
‘The party who had planned to escape during the journey formed the nucleus of our tunnel party, which was formed almost immediately we arrived in the camp. Besides Capt. O’Sullivan and myself, the other members of the original party were:- Lt. P.M.C. Onions, and 2/Lt. S.J.K. Malloy, Ox and Bucks L.I.; Lt. M.B. M’Nab, Royal Scots, and Capt. H. Westley (140 Rgt RA). We decided that the best place for beginning the tunnel was one of the barrack bungalows which was only six ft. from the perimeter of barbed wire. Outside the wire was a cart track, about 30 yds beyond which a slope rose to a crest. Our intention was to emerge on the far side of this crest. We managed to get a small room in this block for five of us.
At that time a party, which had arrived before us from THORN, had already started tunnelling from a deep latrine. Their intention was to come up just beyond the road. At first the Escape Committee would not allow us to begin until the first tunnel was either completed or discovered. After about a fortnight, however, we were allowed to go ahead with our scheme, and began digging in Block 6 about 24 Jun.
In the room was a small stove standing on a slab of concrete two feet square, and a hole was made through the floor beneath this just big enough for a man to get through. Underneath we made a chamber just large enough to turn in, and from there dug outwards until we were under the perimeter wire, where we made a chamber 3 ft. 6 ins. square. From there we continued to dig until by Sep 11 we had reached our destination, about 145 ft from the entrance.
The following are points of interest in the construction of the tunnel:-
Tools. For getting through the reinforced concrete floor we used a piece of iron and a double-sided hacksaw blade brought from POSEN and a wooden basher. For digging we used a cut-down poker, a small jabber made of thick wire set in a bit of broom handle, and a scraper made from a piece of a locker. For removing earth from the tunnel we had two trolleys of wood and tin on runners. The system was for the man at the face to fill a trolley, which was then pulled back to the chamber by a man lying there. He emptied it into the second trolley which was then pulled back into the room where the earth was put into Red Cross cardboard boxes and hidden under beds until it was stowed away by the stowing staff.
Lighting was done by electric light from the room light, three lamps being used in the tunnel. The wiring was obtained from some rooms which had plugs which were not used.
Ventilation. Air was forced down the tunnel by a man working bellows of wood and groundsheet. The first part of the air line was composed of some surplus piping for electric light wiring. When this ran out, we made pipes of stiff paper coated with melted dripping, with tin junctions.
Timber. When we first arrived in Oflag V B all beds were merely wooden shelves two tiers high, two officers sleeping on each shelf. After a time some of these beds were replaced with iron ones. We broke up eight of the wooden beds, this giving us ample timber for the whole tunnel.
Earth Disposal. Between the ceiling of the bungalow and the roof there was an air space of about 2 ft in the middle, the ceilings being fairly strong. There were two skylights in the roof, and, by removing a pane of glass from these and three boards, we were able to get into this air space, where all the earth was stored. To simplify matters we had a stowage staff entirely separate from the digging party, and Capt. Westley took charge of this side of the operations. We estimated that between 25 and 30 tons of earth and rocks were stored in the roof, the rocks being put on top of the walls and the earth spread over to a thickness of about five inches. By the time the digging was complete there was no space left in the roof, and the ceiling was showing cracks, which, however, were not noticed by the Germans.
Guards. Owing to the number of Germans (civilian workmen and N.C.O’s) who were constantly moving about the camp, it was essential to have an efficient system of guards. The total number required was three outside the building and two inside. For the outside guards we also had a special staff of five, who did nothing but this duty, while the digging party provided the two inside guards. The window of our room and the window of the bungalow washroom were separated by a thickness of wall, and the system was that as soon as any German entered the camp an outside guard went to the washroom window and reported the fact to an inside guard. The German’s subsequent movements were reported in the same way. If he was evidently coming straight towards our bungalow five knocks were given on the door. Everything was then closed down. After practice, it took about 25 seconds to close down, put the stove back, and tidy up the room. The hole in the floor was covered by a board smeared with glue on which was spread some of the floor composition powdered up. When the board was in position and dusted over it made quite an efficient camouflage.
Working hours. The work was carried on for 11 hrs a day. Night work was impossible, as one of the floodlights on the perimeter wire was immediately outside our window and sentries patrolled all night up and down the cart track outside the wire. Dog patrols also went round periodically during the night. The five of us who were in the room started work at 0600 hrs and worked till 0800 hrs, when we closed down for parade. Work started again at 0930 hrs until 1200 hrs when we stopped for lunch. Starting again at 1300 hrs, we worked until 1600 hrs and then closed down for afternoon parade. After parade we started at 1730 hrs and continued until lock-up at 2100 hrs or, towards the end, at 2030 hrs, after which the sentries came on and it was no longer safe to work. Each man on the digging party worked a minimum of five hours a day. This consisted of one hour working the air bellows, one hour guarding the room door and pulling the trolley back from the chamber, one hour guarding the room window, one hour working on the face, and one hour in the chamber pulling earth back from the face and passing it back to the room. These hours were naturally increased whenever we had casualties on the working party, and these were fairly frequent. The main reason for the casualties was that if one got the slightest scratch it would immediately fester and never heal. This was a feature of all the German prison camps, and was presumably mainly caused by the extremely low diet. Another cause of casualties was “excavator’s elbow”. The elbows of all of us became more or less raw. In the cases of two officers they swelled up, making it impossible for them to crawl. One officer recovered in time, but the other had to have an operation on his elbow shortly before the tunnel was completed and had to be left behind.
Dimensions. The tunnel was 145 ft long, 1 ft. 9 ins wide, and 1 ft. 6 ins. high.
Although there was no competition or racing between two tunnels, various causes helped us to go ahead considerably faster than the other party. Despite the fact that ours was by far the longer, it became clear that the two tunnels would finish simultaneously, if we did not actually finish first.
The leaders of the two parties had a meeting with the Senior British Officer, and it was decided that the parties should be amalgamated. It was also decided:
(a) We could get more men out of our tunnel than the others could.
(b) The exit of our tunnel would be in a far safer place than that of the others.
(c) In the event of a search our tunnel was the more likely to be discovered.
It was therefore agreed that our tunnel should be used first, but that, as the others had already been given the prior right, nine of their party should go out in the first 18, leaving in pairs alternately with members of our party.
The S.B.O. decided to limit the number of escaping officers to 26, 17 of our party and 9 of the other. This meant that two of our party were left to go out of the latrine tunnel.
On 11 Sep 1941 the tunnel was complete except for a few final details and we waited for a suitable night, which came on 13 Sep. That night was dark and wet. Having been chosen by the party to go first, I went down the tunnel at 2100 hrs to prepare the exit. We had already dug right up to the turf, which we had propped up with a board supported by a post. I had expected to complete the exit in about an hour, but the job actually took about twice that time. The exit was ready about 2245 hrs, and I left first at 2300 hrs followed by O’Sullivan.
At the point where we left the tunnel it was possible for the searchlights to focus on us, but we had all prepared camouflage. Personally I had grass tied on to a badminton net, and, as the searchlights were all over 100 yds away, it was likely that they would pick us up on a wet night, provided we lay still while they were on.
It was necessary to crawl 30-40 yds before any dead ground could be reached, and from there a further 200 yds or more across a field, where at least one searchlight could always pick one up. We had spent ten nights checking up on the searchlights and had found they very rarely did more than a cursory sweep or two or three seconds duration across the whole field, so that we did not consider them a serious menace.
I met Capt. H.B. O’Sullivan at a rendezvous, as we intended to travel the first part of the journey together. With one exception, everyone who had tried to take the direct route from BIBERACH to SWITZERLAND had been caught. We therefore decided to make a detour and take about ten days on the journey, making it entirely across country.
I had with me the following equipment:-
Provisions:- 4½ lbs chocolate
2½ lbs cheese
1 lb German ration biscuits
1½ lbs mixed oatmeal and glucose.
This food was supplemented with apples which we had found growing in profusion everywhere.
Maps: (1) 1 very indifferent map (11 3/4 miles to the inch), obtained in POSEN, giving towns, rivers and railways.
(2) 1 map of the SCHAFFHAUSEN area, 1:200,000 as sent out from England.
Compass: A magnetised needle sent from England.
The following is a daily summary of my journey during the whole of which I walked by night and hid by day. O’Sullivan and I were together during the first part of the journey.
13/14 Sep:- Course N.W. through the forest to UTTENWEILER. Along the RIEDLINGEN road for 2 km. to AHLEN, then S.W. for 6 km, eventually hiding in a larch wood. Nothing particular about the route. Plenty of apples growing beside roads. During afternoon all woods in our neighbourhood were beaten by inhabitants of local village – whether for us or game is uncertain, but probably for us.
14/15 Sep:- Started on S.W. course, but difficulties of penetrating the forest turned us South to KAHZACH and DURNAU, after which we turned West, hiding towards dawn in a fir wood.
15/16 Sep:- Continued West to HERBERTINGEN and the DANUBE, following the latter to MENGEN, where we had great difficulty in finding a hiding place, as all the woods in the district turned out to be apple orchards.
16/17 Sep:- Followed line of railways to KRAUCHENWIES. Soon after starting we were spotted by a civilian on a bicycle and had to run. We continued along railway, through GOGGINGEN and MEMMINGEN, where we hid.
17/18 Sep:- After making a detour round MESSKIRCH we set a course across country for KRUMBACK, very shortly entering the forest again. We eventually emerged 2 km from KRUMBACH and stayed there for the day.
19/20 Sep:- After making a detour round KRUMBACH, we followed the line of the road to SCHWANDORF. After passing through BÜHL the road forked and, as there was no indication which was the correct road, we followed the first line of a stream and then a line of telegraph poles which led us to SCHWANDORF. Our next objective was LIPTINGEN, but immediately after leaving SCHWANDORF we got back in the forest again, and it became a question of taking whichever forest track seemed to go nearest to our destination, none of them being marked or sign-posted. Before reaching LIPTINGEN we had to lie up.
Up to now our night marches has been much shorter than we had intended. Unfortunately, shortly after leaving the Camp at BIBERACH, I fell into a hole and damaged my left knee. This had continued to give trouble and had now reached a stage where I could only travel with the help of two sticks. It was pointless to allow this to hold two of us up, and I persuaded Capt. O’Sullivan to go on.
20/21 Sep:- I had to abandon the cross-country route and decided to make for TUTTLINGEN and from there follow the railway down to the frontier. That night I accordingly made for NEUHAUSEN and followed the line of the main road to TUTTLINGEN where I lay up that day. From there on I followed the line of the railway, walking on a path beside the track. Walking beside the railway is easy, and except at occasional big level crossings and stations, where I had to make a detour, I did not see a soul on the track from 2200 hrs to 0430 hrs.
21/22 Sep:- The only place of interest on the stretch in IMMENDINGEN, where there is a large railway junction. When I passed at about 0100 hrs there was a great deal of activity in shunting goods traffic. Passing a warehouse near the centre of the village – which I was compelled to go through as I could not skirt it – I heard a number of men talking French. I presumed that these were French P/W employed on the railway.
22/23 Sep:- I left the railway about six miles from BLUMBERG, as I wanted a place called ZOLLHAUS. A large factory, which I believe to be a cement factory, is situated in or just by ZOLLHAUS and the machinery can be heard from a distance of six to seven miles at night. Running North from ZOLLHAUS is a large concrete Autobahn under construction. At the point where I crossed it, level with BLUMBERG, the Autobahn is half completed, i.e., it is a single track road.
23/24 Sep:- From ACHDORF I again had to cut across country. North-East of LAUSHEIM I came on a landing ground for aeroplanes, surrounded by red lights. It was difficult to estimate the extent of the area surrounded by these lights, but I had the impression that it was about 20 acres. I spent one day in a small copse near the landing ground, but saw no planes using it. My final objective before approaching the frontier was the BONNDORF-WEIZEN main road, which I found with no difficulty.
26/27 Sep:- I approached the frontier, keeping South of the line of the BONNDORF-WEIZEN road. This road runs through thick forest on both sides. On the North side the forest comes down to the road, while on the South there is a stretch of fields varying between 200 yds and half a mile in width between the road and the forest. The South side is by far the more satisfactory route. I had intended to keep to the forest at this stage, but gave up the idea because of the noise I made walking on fallen beech leaves and twigs. I kept along the edge of the forest, travelling quickly and quietly on the grass and keeping the road under observation, thereby keeping direction easily and at the same time watching patrols. The BONNDORF-WEIZEN road was patrolled about every quarter of an hour by two motor cyclists, operating in opposite directions. These patrols appeared to cover the stretch from UNTERWANGEN to STÜHLINGEN, S.W. of WEIZEN. The motor cyclists carried lights. On the same road was a patrol of three men on ordinary cycles, without lights, who passed every hour. Both the motor cyclists and cyclists kept to the main road. I saw no sign of any standing patrol on the edge of the forest. I saw no wire on the WEIZEN-STÜHLINGEN stretch of the SCHAFFHAUSEN salient, though there was thick hedges along the streams. I saw no dogs at the frontier. There are, however, dogs at all the railway level-crossings.
Keeping all the way to the edge of the forest I had no difficulty in skirting either SCHWANINGEN or WEIZEN, neither of which stretch out to anywhere near the forest line. About half a mile after passing WEIZEN a tall chimney and some dim lights can be seen in the valley by the road. As soon as this is sighted care must be taken, as much of the ground becomes marshy and difficult. There are also some steep drops which might be dangerous on a dark night. There is, however, a semi-cleared track through the forest just above this point. The trees have been cut, but there are a lot of brambles and other undergrowth which make silent progress difficult. I found this clearing preferable to the marshy ground and it brought me out on to the main road about half a mile below the point where it turns to run S.W. parallel to the frontier – i.e., about half a mile below WEIZEN station.
From behind the hedge I saw a motor cyclist, with lights, go past and a party of three cyclists without lights, after which, the road being clear, I crossed it and came to the single-track railway. On my left was a small level-crossing, where I believed that I could see a guard. I therefore crossed about 300 yds lower down. This line, unlike most German lines, can easily be crossed quietly, as the sleepers are almost flush with the ground instead of being built up into an embankment of flints. Beyond the railway there was an open stretch of 150 yds of grass, beyond which I came to a stream 8 ft wide and 2 ft deep. There is a thick hedge of the West side of this stream which makes it difficult to cross quietly. I could find no gap in the hedge and had to push through. Beyond this stream is another stretch of about 60 yds of grass before the river WUTACH is finally reached. The WUTACH itself is about 20 ft across and 2 ft 6 ins deep and easily fordable.
From the time I left the railway, I saw no sign of any guard, though as I crossed the first stretch of grass I heard a rifle being unloaded some distance away on my left. I may, therefore, have crossed as guards were being changed, the time being them approximately 0100 hrs on 27 Sep. On the Swiss side I saw no guards at all. After crossing the WUTACH, I crossed about 300 yds of field, climbed a steep, thickly wooded hill, and followed a ride due East through the forest for about 2 km. This brought me out to a road which let into SCHLEITHEIM. I knocked on a door where I saw a light and was very well received by the inhabitants, who put me in touch with the local police.