Castle of the Eagles Read online

  CASTLE OF THE EAGLES

  Also by Mark Felton

  Zero Night: The Untold Story of World War Two’s Most Daring Great Escape

  The Sea Devils: Operation Struggle and the Last Great Raid of World War Two

  CASTLE OF THE EAGLES

  ESCAPE FROM MUSSOLINI’S COLDITZ

  MARK FELTON

  Published in the UK in 2017

  by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

  39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

  email: [email protected]

  www.iconbooks.com

  Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia

  by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,

  74–77 Great Russell Street,

  London WC1B 3DA or their agents

  Distributed in the UK, Europe and Asia

  by Grantham Book Services,

  Trent Road, Grantham NG31 7XQ

  Distributed in Australia and New Zealand

  by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,

  PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,

  Crows Nest, NSW 2065

  Distributed in South Africa

  by Jonathan Ball, Office B4, The District,

  41 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock 7925

  Distributed in India by Penguin Books India,

  7th Floor, Infinity Tower – C, DLF Cyber City,

  Gurgaon 122002, Haryana

  ISBN: 978-178578-118-6 (hardback)

  ISBN: 978-178578-219-0 (paperback)

  Text copyright © 2017 Mark Felton

  The author has asserted his moral rights.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Typeset in Janson Text by Marie Doherty

  Printed and bound in the UK

  by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  To Fang Fang with love

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mark Felton has written eighteen books on World War Two including Zero Night (‘the story of the greatest escape of World War II has been told for the first time’ – Daily Mail) and The Sea Devils (‘A thrilling page-turner … it will leave your fingernails significantly shorter’ – History of War). His Japan’s Gestapo was named ‘Best Book of 2009’ by The Japan Times. He also writes regularly for publications including Military History Monthly and World War II. After a decade spent working in Shanghai, he now lives in Norwich.

  Visit www.markfelton.co.uk

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 The Prize Prisoner

  2 A Gift of Goggles

  3 Mazawattee’s Mad House

  4 Men of Honour

  5 Advance Party

  6 The Travelling Menagerie

  7 The Eagles’ Nest

  8 Trial and Error

  9 Going Underground

  10 Six Seconds

  11 The Ghost Goes West

  12 Under the Dome

  13 Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow

  14 The Pilgrim Band

  15 Elevenses

  16 Boy Scouting

  17 Mickey Blows the Gaff

  18 Night Crossing

  Epilogue

  Colour Plates

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Notes

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Most of the dialogue sequences in this book come from the veterans themselves, from written sources, diaries or spoken interviews. I have at times changed the tense to make it more immediate. Occasionally, where only basic descriptions of what happened exist, I have recreated small sections of dialogue, attempting to remain true to the characters and their manners of speech.

  Prologue

  The short, wiry man with the grey military moustache, known to everyone simply as ‘Dick’, sat slightly uncomfortably between two companions on a stone bench that had been warmed by the bright Tuscan sun. He wore a plain grey civilian suit and on his back was a bulky homemade rucksack that looked fit to burst. Stuck in the waistband of his trousers was a peculiar wedge-shaped block of wood with a metal hook protruding from its narrowest side. The terrace where the three men sat was pleasant, stretching along the western side of the castle’s central keep, and actually consisted of a lower and upper terrace enclosed by an eight-foot-high, thick stone perimeter wall, the top of which was crenellated with medieval battlements. The prisoners used the lower terrace for exercise while the guards watched them easily from the upper terrace, any danger of fraternising neatly eliminated.1

  The castle, built of grey stone, sat imperiously atop a high rocky hill near the village of Fiesole, five miles from the Renaissance splendours of Florence. It was a gloomy Neo-Gothic reconstructed medieval fortress, the slopes of its lofty perch planted with cypress, pines and shrubs.

  Beyond the huge wall was a sheer drop of some 30 feet to the solid bedrock below, upon which the great castle had been constructed many centuries before. Two tall battlemented towers rose up at the castle’s northern end, overlooking the main gate and road down to the nearby village, a smattering of tiled roofs and little fields huddled at the foot of the hill. The views from the Castle’s terrace were stunning – rolling green hills that stretched away to Florence. On a good day one could see the golden dome of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore shimmering in the sun like a precious jewel.

  Dick’s heart was racing. He was waiting for a window of opportunity that would be measured in just a handful of seconds. That was all the time he had to make his daring bid for freedom. It was risky to attempt such a thing in broad daylight, but he had no choice. At night Dick and his fellow prisoners were confined to their rooms in another part of the castle and denied access to the terrace.

  Tuscany was hot and sultry in late July 1942, and Dick sweated inside his suit as he waited for the signal to go. His keen blue eyes carefully watched as his comrades moved into their positions to assist his escape.

  Suddenly the signal was given. Dick didn’t hesitate. He stood up on the bench, facing the wall, raised his arms above his head and stiffened his legs. His comrades on either side took hold of his legs and, as they had practised so many times before, launched Dick skywards. Dick stretched his arms up until his fingertips found the bottom of the guards’ walkway and then he pulled with all his might, his comrades pushing on the soles of his feet until he was out of reach. With a supreme effort Dick fought to gain the platform, his short legs pedalling in the air as his arms took the strain. With panic rising like a wave inside of him, 53-year-old Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, the hero who had defeated the Italians in Africa and taken 130,000 prisoners into the bargain, gritted his teeth and pulled for all he was worth. One of the unlikeliest escapers of the Second World War was about to try one of the most daring escapes in the history of war.

  CHAPTER 1

  ___________________

  The Prize Prisoner

  ‘After nine months as a member of his staff, when we left England I admired and respected Air Marshal Boyd. After two and a half years of prison life with him, living in the same house, often in the same room, I admired and respected him a hundred times more. I knew him then to be a great and simple man.’

  Flight Lieutenant John Leeming

  John Leeming cursed loudly as his shoulder connected painfully with one of the Wellington bomber’s internal struts, his stomach lurching as the stricken plane pitched and rolled alarmingly through the air as it headed for the earth. The wind screamed like a typhoon through a large and jagged hole in the Wellington’s floor, one of several caused by cannon shells from the swarm of Italian fighters that had suddenly pounced on them without warning.1 Leeming kicked at a heavy grey steel strongbox with one of his long legs, edging it towards the lip of the hole until, with a final push of
his boot, the box flew out of the aircraft, plummeting towards the Mediterranean far below. One more box remained, and Leeming, dressed in his blue RAF officer’s uniform with pilot’s wings above the left breast pocket, his legs aching from his awkward position on the plane’s floor, began to kick at it wildly until it followed the other boxes out through the hole. Then Leeming lay on the floor for a few seconds, listening to the roar of the dying engines as the wind blew everything that wasn’t secured around the Wellington’s interior like a mini tornado. I’ve just thrown away £250,000, thought Leeming, shaking his head in silent disbelief. ‘A quarter of a million of pounds sent to the bottom of the sea!’ he muttered aloud. In Leeming’s opinion, the war had suddenly taken a dramatically strange turn for the worse.

  ‘Brace for impact!’ came Squadron Leader Norman Samuels’ frantic yell from the cockpit. ‘She’s going in hard!’ Leeming was instantly jerked out of his private reverie, rolling on to his stomach and grabbing hold of anything solid-looking that would support him. He glanced behind him and saw his boss, Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd, ‘a short, broad-chested, and powerfully built’2 man with short greying hair and a neat moustache, doing likewise, his normally genial face set with a determined grimace. Boyd caught his eye and mouthed something, but Leeming couldn’t hear what it was above the racket of the whining, guttering engines and the ceaseless wind. Leeming glanced back at the hole through which he had just deposited the cash boxes. The azure of the sea had been replaced by green rolling hills and fields. ‘Sicily,’ muttered Leeming to himself. The Wellington was now very low. Leeming closed his eyes and awaited the end.

  *

  A strange quietness followed the terrific violence of the crash landing. Leeming lay on his side in the broken fuselage, his hands still grimly gripping a spar. The air was dusty and there was a ticking noise coming from one of the engines as it cooled. Then Air Marshal Boyd, Leeming and the four crewmen began to stir, groaning and occasionally crying out in pain from their injuries. Leeming dragged himself out of the fuselage with the others. His arm hurt like hell.

  Once outside, Leeming surveyed the Wellington. The plane was a complete wreck: one of its huge wings had broken off, its nose was smashed in, and the big propeller blades had been bent back on themselves by the force of the impact. For several hundred feet behind the Wellington the Sicilian landscape had been gouged and churned up by the crash landing. Leeming narrowed his eyes against the glare of the sun, which was warm on his smoke-blackened face. Boyd slowly stood and walked, slightly unsteadily, around to the cockpit where he began fumbling in his pockets, pulling out some papers and his cigarette lighter. Leeming soon realised that the Air Marshal was trying to set fire to the plane. It was a vital task, considering what Boyd had been carrying aboard among his personal kit. His private papers would comprise an intelligence treasure trove if they were to fall into the hands of the enemy. They, along with the plane, had to be thoroughly destroyed before the Italians arrived to investigate and take the Britons prisoner.

  Leeming reflected on the journey that had landed him unexpectedly in the hands of the enemy. They had taken off from RAF Stradishall near Haverhill in Suffolk on 19 November 1940 bound for Cairo via the airfield at Luqa in Malta. Once in Egypt, the 51-year-old Boyd was to assume deputy command of Allied air forces under Air Chief Marshal Longmore.3 The appointment of the energetic Boyd to the Middle East came at a time when Britain was struggling to maintain its position in Egypt against a huge Italian assault.

  Benito Mussolini had entered Italy into the war on Germany’s side in late June 1940, after witnessing Hitler’s triumphs in Poland and against the Western Allies in France and the Low Countries. Il Duce undoubtedly thought that Italy might be able to snatch a few of the victory laurels for herself on the back of Germany’s defeat of France and the ejection of the British from the Continent. But the Italian entry into the war was particularly worrisome for Britain in the Mediterranean, a traditional bastion of British power. The large and powerful Italian fleet and the massive Italian army in Libya posed serious threats to the British Empire’s lifeline, the Suez Canal, as well as to British bases at Malta and Gibraltar. Already seriously run-down as the best equipment was siphoned off for the defence of Britain against a possible German invasion, the small British garrison in Egypt was vulnerable and difficult to supply. Mussolini had ordered the invasion of Egypt in early August 1940, and by 16 September the Italian 10th Army had occupied and dug in around the Egyptian town of Sidi Barrani. Outnumbered ten to one, the small British force under General Sir Claude Auchinleck had begun planning for Operation Compass, a series of large-scale raids against the Italian fortresses that would be led by a plucky and aggressive general named Richard O’Connor. Owen Boyd was being sent to Egypt to attempt to revitalise and reorganise the RAF’s response to the Italian threat. Boyd seemed the ideal choice – a pugnacious First World War decorated flyer whose last post had been leading RAF Balloon Command, providing vital barrage balloon cover for Britain’s cities.

  But now, eleven hours after leaving England, Air Marshal Boyd’s plane was a battered wreck lying in a Sicilian field. After they had dodged German flak near Paris, Wellington T-2873 from 214 Middle East Flight had headed out over a wet and stormy Mediterranean towards Egypt, with a scheduled refuelling stop at Malta.4 But an apparent navigational error and consequent fuel shortage had brought the Wellington too close to the island of Sicily where it was immediately pounced upon by alert Italian fighters and forced down.5 Questions would be asked as to why Boyd’s plane had been sent unescorted to the Middle East by such an obviously dangerous route, especially as he was one of the few senior officers that were privy to the secrets of Bletchley Park and the ‘Ultra’ intelligence emanating from cracking the German Enigma code.6 It was for this reason that Boyd, still shaken up from the crash landing, struggled to burn the aircraft and his private papers that had been carried aboard.

  The boxes full of banknotes that Leeming had kicked overboard into the sea had been loaded under guard in England. They had been destined for the British headquarters in Cairo as well, vital operating funds for various hush-hush sections that conducted ‘butcher and bolt’ operations behind enemy lines. Once the Wellington had been hit, Boyd had pointed at the small pile of grey boxes and yelled at Leeming: ‘Get rid of it, John! We’re going down in enemy territory!’7 Shortly afterwards Leeming, his heart heavy at the sacrifice, had kicked out the quarter of a million pounds, ironically enough money in 1940 to buy a replacement Wellington three-and-a-half times over.8

  It had only been because of the direct intervention of Prime Minister Winston Churchill that Boyd had been on the plane. Air Chief Marshal Longmore had requested a different officer be appointed his deputy, Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Tedder, but the Prime Minister had rejected Tedder and approved Boyd’s promotion instead.9 With Boyd having been taken prisoner, Tedder would now assume Boyd’s post anyway.

  *

  Boyd looked up from his frantic job of setting fire to the front of the plane and spotted movement. A motley collection of Sicilian peasants, dressed in their traditionally colourful open-necked shirts, broad waist sashes and trousers worn with puttees up to their knees, were gingerly approaching the crash scene, armed with wood axes. They had been cutting down trees near the village of Comiso. ‘Stop them, John,’ shouted Boyd at Leeming. Leeming turned and stared at the peasants. With their axes slung over their shoulders, moustachioed faces and old-fashioned clothes, they looked like the kinds of rogues who had been at Blackbeard’s side. Leeming swallowed hard and stood rooted to the spot. Boyd’s booming and irritated voice repeated his order. Is this how it ends for me, thought Leeming gloomily, I survive a plane crash only to be murdered by Sicilian cut-throats?

  Focusing his mind, Leeming followed his friend’s order and began walking towards the Sicilian peasants. He touched the .38 calibre Webley revolver that he wore in a holster around his waist, but then thought better of it. He didn’t relish waving a gun in the face o
f these well-armed locals, particularly a gun that only held six shots when there were fifteen armed Sicilians. Instead, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a battered packet of Woodbines and a stub of pencil and started to draw a Union Jack.10 Holding up his artwork before the Sicilians, he noticed how the sun glinted off the sharp axe blades that were slung over their shoulders. The peasants soon gathered around him in an excited, chattering mass as they debated loudly what to do.11 Suddenly, over Leeming’s shoulder the cockpit of the shattered Wellington burst into flames with a loud ‘whoomph’, startling the Sicilians who began running around, yelling and shrieking excitedly. They were clearly worried about explosions, probably thinking that the Wellington was equipped with a full bomb load. Leeming took the opportunity to retreat to where Boyd, Squadron Leader Samuels, Flight Lieutenant Payn, Pilot Officer Watson and Sergeant Wynn had gathered near the aircraft’s tail.12 Thick black smoke poured from the front of the plane, blotting out the harsh sun, as the flames devoured the Wellington’s interior. Boyd smiled at his handiwork.

  Leeming, determined to salvage his personal kit before the rest of the plane was engulfed, climbed back inside the fuselage. Grabbing the kit, he was suddenly lifted out of the aircraft as if thrown by a huge hand, landing in a winded pile on the grass. Squadron Leader Samuels had managed to arm a special explosive device designed to destroy the plane’s sensitive equipment shortly before they had crashed, and this had detonated just as Leeming grabbed his kit. Leeming had had enough. He lay on his back on the grass attempting to recover his composure, the pain in his arm bothering him, listening to Boyd attempting to coax the Sicilians back over in a loud, impatient voice, telling them in English that there were no bombs on board. His efforts were suddenly undermined when the flames reached the oxygen cylinders carried aboard the Wellington, which promptly exploded, spraying shrapnel through the air. Leeming, Boyd and the others jumped to their feet and ran after the Sicilians, anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the rapidly disintegrating plane.13