The staff in the Training School steadily compiled a training manual which became known as the Bulletin. The Bulletin served an important role as a tool in educating potential prisoners of war about possible escape routes and the nature of escape aids, including maps, which were being produced (see Chapter 4).
The pressures on the lecturing staff were considerable and continually increased as the war progressed. Initially both the Royal Navy and the Army had appeared uninterested in the training courses offered and, certainly in the first year or so of its existence, MI9 staff worked hard to stimulate interest and used many personal contacts to raise awareness of their work. They appeared to overcome some initial opposition from the Royal Navy and some Army commands, and by May 1944 the record shows that very significant numbers in all three services had been briefed: 110,000 in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, 346,000 in the Army and 290,000 in the Royal Air Force, and a total of 3,250 lectures had been delivered.
ESCAPE-MINDEDNESS
Escape-mindedness was the term which Crockatt coined to describe the philosophy which he sought to instil into the frontline forces which his staff regularly briefed and trained. Inculcating and fostering this philosophy was the primary aim of the training, and the rest of the MI9 team was working to ensure that the approach was supported in a very practical way. They stressed that, if captured, it was an officer’s duty to attempt to escape and, not only officers, it was a duty which extended to all ranks. Many years after the end of the war when Commander John Pryor RN came to write his memoirs of the years he spent as a prisoner of war during World War II, it is not surprising that he recalled that:
escaping was the duty of a PoW but with the whole of NW Europe under German control and with no maps or compass it seemed a pretty hopeless task.
Stalag Luft III (Sagan), drawn by the artist Ley Kenyon, who was a prisoner in the camp. It shows the position of Tom, Dick, Harry and George tunnels. Harry was used in the ‘Great Escape’.
The briefings and training which MI9 provided alerted officers to every aspect of potential evasion and escape. The emphasis was on evading capture whenever possible or, if captured, to attempt to escape at the earliest opportunity and certainly before being imprisoned behind barbed wire in the many prisoner of war camps. It was standard practice for captured officers to be separated into oflags from the other ranks who were kept in stalags. Officers were, therefore, made responsible for ensuring that their men were appropriately briefed about what to do in captivity and the organization of Escape Committees became one of their principal priorities.
It is perhaps a reflection of the extent to which the philosophy permeated the camps that by the time the Allies were landing in occupied Europe and slowly advancing east, it was felt necessary to issue a ‘stay-put’ order to prisoners of war to ensure they did not get caught up in the frontline whilst trying to flee captivity. The order was sent by MI9 on 18 February 1944 in a coded message: it directed that
ON GERMAN SURRENDER OR COLLAPSE, ALL P/W ALL SERVICES INCLUDING DOMINION & COLONIAL & INDIAN MUST STAY PUT & AWAIT ORDERS
Many families also wrote to their sons in the camps strongly discouraging them from any escape attempts, as a result of the Stalag Luft III (Sagan) experience when fifty of the men who had taken part in the ‘Great Escape’ in March 1944 were executed on being recaptured.
The MI9 staff who subsequently wrote about their escapes, notably Neave and Langley, and even Evans who had escaped during World War I, all highlighted the importance of an escape philosophy. Neave described the way in which escapers had ‘to think of imprisonment as a new phase of living, not as the end of life’ and the extent to which the real purpose of the escaper was ‘to overcome by every means the towering obstacles in his way’. It was a state of mind that MI9 encouraged.
It was understandable that some might prefer the relative safety of the camp rather than life on the run. Even for these men there were jobs to be done to support the escapes of others. It was strength of mind and purpose which was needed rather than just physical health and strength, a point epitomized by the escapes of Jimmy Langley, still suffering from a suppurating amputation wound, and Douglas Bader, restricted by his two artificial legs. Initiative, foresight and courage were needed and luck also came into it: as Evans stressed, ‘however hard you try, however skilful you are, luck is an essential element in a successful escape’, while David James noted in A Prisoner’s Progress (1947) that:
Luck is the most essential part in an escape . . . for every man out, there were at least ten better men who would have got clear but who did not have the good fortune they deserved.
Teamwork is the one competence which comes through all the stories and plans relating to escape. This almost certainly reflected the public school philosophy where your efforts were for school, house and team rather than for self. As an Old Wykehamist, Evans personified this approach and it is not surprising to learn that between the wars he captained the Kent county cricket team. To some extent it could be argued that MI9 was pushing at an open door in seeking to inculcate Crockatt’s philosophy into a new generation of young men. Many of them had been educated at preparatory and public schools and apparently raised on a diet of escape classics of the last war. Some of them acknowledged this when they came to write their own accounts of their escape experience during World War II, as James recorded:
In my prep-school days at Summer Fields, I had read all the escape classics of the last war – such books as The Tunnellers of Holzminden, Within Four Walls, I Escape, and The Escapers’ Club [sic] – and as a proposition the business of escaping fascinated me.
It is clear from their post-war accounts that many escapers spent every waking moment of captivity plotting their escape. Some identified the very human traits which they believed could most aid them. Gullibility (of the captor) and audacity (of the escaper) were high on the list, as was luck. There was a psychology attached to escaping, as James recognized:
I came to the conclusion that escaping was essentially a psychological problem, depending on the inobservance of mankind, coupled with a ready acceptance of the everyday at its face value.
The Germans were apparently well aware of this philosophy and the extent to which it sustained British prisoners of war and constrained their own resources in guarding those captured and seeking to prevent their escape. Once the Allies had landed in mainland Europe and started to advance east, they captured not simply German troops but also a number of key German documents amongst which was a document identified as GR-107.94. It must have made fascinating reading for MI9 as it revealed the extent to which the Germans were well aware of their work. It is a lengthy document and relates entirely to the escape methods employed by Allied Flying Personnel. It was dated 29 December 1944 and described the escape philosophy, the duty to escape, and the maps provided on silk and thin tissue. It goes so far as to list nine maps which they knew had been produced. Whilst it reflected the extent to which the Germans were aware of what they were up against, it also indicated that, if they were aware of only nine escape maps when MI9 had by that time produced over 200 individual items and over one and three quarter million copies, they had arguably only discovered the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
BACKGROUND TO THE MAPPING PROGRAMME
‘For