Reid and Wardle sawed a 2-foot square through the ceiling and found the room below disused and empty. To disguise their activity, they constructed an ingenious device known as ‘the shovewood’. This was a plaster-covered hatch fixed from above with turnbuckles resting on the ceiling joists. It was virtually invisible from below, and in any event no guards ever went there. This was Neave’s ‘magic entrance’. As Reinhold Eggers later lamented: ‘We had left the prisoners a very simple barrier, no more than a floor-ceiling between their quarters plus a door into a passage on our side to get through.’1 Reid clambered down on a rope made from a mattress cover, padded down the corridor in carpet slippers and picked the lock of the door. Beyond, a passage ran over the courtyard gate – the most difficult barrier to negotiate – and ended at another locked door. This yielded easily to his skills and Reid found himself at the top of steps leading into an attic above the guardhouse. The sounds of laughter and noisy drinking drifted up from the German Officers’ Mess below. If an escaper could disguise himself as a German officer, the guards at the gate would scarcely give him a second glance, because this time he would be approaching from the right direction.
What is more, the prisoners were planning to put on a Christmas pantomime within weeks, offering the perfect opportunity to mount an escape. Reid began a search for the right officers. He quickly whittled his list down to six, including Neave. He told them ‘casually’ that he could get them out of Colditz if they could acquire convincing German officers’ uniforms. Neave and Lieutenant John Hyde-Thomson, who had already tried to get out in a consignment of palliasses, were finally chosen to make the break, in company with two Dutch officers.
There were compelling reasons for cooperation with the Dutch. First, their command of German was much better than that of the British, second, their long blue-green army greatcoats bore a striking resemblance to the Wermacht uniform, and third, they were inveterate escapers. They had already made four ‘home runs’ via Switzerland. This Anglo-Dutch entente had been operating for some months through Reid and his opposite number, Captain van den Heuvel, invariably known as ‘Vandy’. He finally settled on a brave young officer of the Netherlands East Indies Army, Second Lieutenant Toni Luteyn, to accompany Neave. In 1940, the Dutch army had capitulated to the invading Germans. Its officers were required to sign an oath of non-combatance, or face internment for the rest of the war. Virtually all signed, with the exception of a contingent of sixty-seven colonial army cadets who had just passed out of Breda Military Academy. Luteyn, aged twenty-three, was one of them. He was interned in a camp at Zossi on the Dutch – German border, but when one of them escaped they were moved deeper inland to Oflag VIIIc in Poland. After more escapes, the whole lot was dispatched to Colditz in July 1941, arriving soon after Neave. Until now Neave and Luteyn had scarcely met. They were thrown together by calculation rather than friendship. Despite being the younger of the two – he was only twenty-four – Luteyn was the senior partner because of his command of German. ‘We had some exercises, because Neave did not speak German, except jawohl,’ Luteyn said years later, ‘but going through the guardroom there was quite a chance somebody would talk to us, and they would talk to the highest ranking officer. So I was “promoted” to Hauptmann and he was a first lieutenant. We practised that exercise for a week in the courtyard. He had to march on my left-hand side. If he didn’t wheel to my left, I shouted at him.’2
Meanwhile, both would-be escapers were rehearsing for the camp pantomime, Ballet Nonsense. Neave later dismissed the ‘pathetic futility’ of the entertainment, insisting that although such performances keep prisoners from brooding on their fate, the actual performances were ghastly. But at the time he threw himself energetically into the show, writing and producing a three-act sketch with the improbable title ‘The Mystery of Wombat College’, which was clearly based on his experiences at Eton. Neave played the principal character, the unpleasant headmaster Dr Calomel. The other parts were equally nasty, as befitted the obscene dialogue and cynical performance. The chaplains complained about the ‘unsuitability’ of the sketch and Neave thought it a ‘wretched little piece’ but it brought the house down in Oflag IVc.
A photograph of the full cast shows him striking a pose in gown and mortar board of black paper and steel-rimmed spectacles, made up to look like a beetle-browed, leering Groucho Marx. While Neave busied himself on stage, Reid and Wardle were hard at work beneath his feet creating the ‘shovewood’ escape route through which they planned to send several Anglo-Dutch teams. Neave and Luteyn would go first, followed twenty-four hours later by Hyde-Thomson and Luteyn’s fellow officer Lieutenant Donkers. At one point in rehearsals, when Neave was pacing the boards in a scene where Dr Calomel expels the son of a duke, Reid and Wardle emerged from beneath his feet, covered in dust.
Neave acquired a Netherlands Home Army uniform overcoat, which he hid, wrapped in sacking, beneath the floorboards. The prisoners had hundreds of these hides, some of which are still giving up their secrets today, sixty years later. With the help of camp experts, he then set about converting it into a German officer’s uniform. Epaulettes, fashioned from linoleum cut from the bathroom floor, were painted silver to match the officers’ silver braid. He gave himself a gold regimental number. Neave promoted himself to Oberleutnant Schwarz and Scarlet O’Hara carved gold wooden stars to denote his rank. O’Hara was one of the unsung heroes of Colditz who sat in their primitive quarters day after day helping others to escape. The selflessness of men like him helped twenty officers to escape from the ‘impregnable’ fortress, eleven of them British – the best escape record of any camp in Nazi Germany.
Then came the problem of the buttons. O’Hara and Neave went to Pat Reid in some distress. Neave told him the project was running short of lead. O’Hara’s reserves of lead piping – ‘thin German stuff’ – had been used up. As they spoke O’Hara eyed longingly the alcohol still that the British officers were using to make their Christmas booze. Reid took fright: ‘What are you looking at? I hope you’re not hinting.’ O’Hara demurred but pointed out that the only other source of lead piping was in the lavatory block. With only three lavatories to serve forty officers breaking one up might trigger a revolt, so the still’s lead coil was removed, melted down and poured into white clay moulds carved by a Dutch officer. ‘Oberleutnant Schwarz’s’ belt and leggings were made from cardboard, as was his revolver holster, stuffed with nothing more dangerous than newspaper. The finishing touch, a cap of an Offizier of the Third Reich, was converted from Neave’s own dress uniform cap by Squadron Leader Brian Paddon. It was an impressive sight: the shiny black peak bent Nazi-style, with a design of leaves, a red and white roundel, eagle’s wings and a swastika on the front, all made from linoleum, the whole thing finished off with white piping sewed to the edge of the brim. Neave was delighted. ‘With such a uniform I could face the arc lights once more with confidence,’ he remembered.3 Even Reid was impressed. At a passing-out test, he complimented Neave and his helpers. The uniforms would pass in any conditions other than broad daylight at close quarters.
Neave was by now impatient to go. He harried Reid about the readiness of the escape route and was told to keep his hair on. Meanwhile, rehearsals for the pantomime went ahead. Providentially, Luteyn was in the camp orchestra. Neave remembered him as a drummer, but Luteyn insists he played the double bass, which he bought from an English officer. A unique photograph of the show’s line-up confirms that in this performance he played the double bass. The escape was planned to take place a few days before Christmas. The weather was deteriorating rapidly and Neave was anxious to avoid freezing to death on a German hillside. A combination of circumstances, however, forced a delay. According to Neave, their uniforms and false papers were not quite ready but Luteyn recollects that the postponement was due to a seasonal increase in train controls because so many German soldiers were going home for Christmas. Either way, the escape bid was postponed until the new year. Ballet Nonsense was a huge success; it included a new scene at Wombat College in which Dr Calomel gave a burlesque Nazi salute three times,