Germans transformed the castle into one of their top-tier POW camps. Only the most persistent and trouble- some prisoners were sent there—the repeat escapers, the most ardent trouble- makers. Among them was legendary RAF Wing Commander Douglas Bader, who lost both legs in a flying accident in 1931, but talked his way back into a Spitfire cockpit in time for the Battle of Britain in 1940. Finally brought down over France in spring 1942, Bader had repeatedly con- founded his captors with his several escape attempts, leading them to resort to ccasionally confiscating his artificial egs, and ultimately sending him—and his attitude—to Colditz. What the Germans had accomplished, unwittingly, was to assemble the best and the brightest among the Allied escapers— all under one roof. The result was a string of escape attempts that taxed the imagi- nation and the patience of the German high command to near the breaking point. The head of the British Colditz escape committee, P.R. Reid, wrote a pair of books on the camp and its history: The Colditz Story and Men of Colditz. The prisoners grudgingly respected, even
liked, some of their captors, including one
of the guards, Pupka, and security officer
Capt. Reinhold Eggers (who authored his
own book titled Colditz: The German
Story). Eggers once said ruefully, “The
castle was built to be impossible to get
into. My job is to make it impossible to
get out of.”
Eggers was only marginally successful.
In all, there were some 300 escape
attempts from Colditz. The overall suc-
cess rate included a total of 31 “home
runs.” From 1939 onward, 12 Frenchmen,
11 Brits, seven Dutchmen, and one Pole
made it all the way.
NO WAY TO TUNNEL OUT ||
Most are familiar with tunneling as a
means of escape from German prison
camps. Though some tried, tunneling was
pretty much out of the question at
Colditz. Its walls were solid rock 12 feet
thick. For the most part, escape attempts
took the form of deception and disguise.
Prisoner Mike Sinclair, known as “The
Red Fox,” devised an elaborate ruse,
impersonating a particularly flamboyant
Feldwebel guard nicknamed “Franz
Josef.” His disguise included a precisely
tailored uniform with all insignia, theatri-
cal makeup, and a facsimile of the guard’s
flowing mustache. Sinclair was fluent in
German and had perfected mimicking the
guard’s mannerisms and unique voice. He
bluffed his way past two guard stations,
but the caper went awry when the last
guard between him and freedom noticed
that his forged identity papers were the
wrong color.
