Whistle a few notes of the theme tune to the film The Great Escape and it’s likely to conjure up visions of dozens of men passing through the ‘Harry’ tunnel at Stalag Luft III in 1944. British officers such as Pat Reid and Airey Neave also found fame for proving that the so-called ‘escape-proof’ Colditz Castle was anything but.
The story of Franz von Werra
In all, many hundreds of escapes or escape attempts were made by Allied prisoners during the Second World War and scores of books have been written about them. Not so well known is the story of the Swiss-born fighter ace Franz von Werra. He is the only German prisoner-of-war to have made a well-documented ‘home run’ to Germany during the Second World War (the other possible candidate is a U-boat seaman, Walter Kurt Reich, who is believed to have jumped from a prison ship in Canada).
Escape attempts from an English POW camp
Shot down over Kent, von Werra made two escape attempts while in England. On the second occasion he was part of a five-man team who, according to von Werra, used spoons to dig a tunnel out of Camp 13 at Swanwick, Derbyshire. Masquerading as a Royal Netherlands Air Force pilot, he arrived at RAF Hucknall, a training school airfield near Nottingham, with the idea of stealing a plane and flying across the Channel to freedom.
The escapee climbed into a Hawker Hurricane, telling a nearby mechanic he was taking it up for a practice flight. His plan was only thwarted by a suspicious squadron leader who arrested him at gunpoint before he could work out how to take off. The tunnel von Werra helped dig is preserved at what is now a Christian conference centre.
Transfer to Canada – and subsequent escape
Franz von Werra was transported across the Atlantic to Canada with other captured German servicemen in January 1941. Aided by other prisoners, he leapt out of a speeding train en route to a prison camp by Lake Superior. Miraculously saved from death by a snowdrift, he walked 30 miles from near Smiths Falls, Ontario, to the mile-wide St Lawrence River, which there marked the border with the still neutral United States. Under cover of darkness and a snowstorm, he stole a large rowing boat, dragged it painfully across the ice that covered most of the river, and drifted agonisingly slowly over to the US.
Why von Werra's freedom didn't last long
Frozen and hungry, von Werra was arrested for vagrancy at Ogdensburg in New York state. He was charged with illegal entry into the country but bailed by the local German consul and spirited over the border to Mexico before he could be extradited to Canada. It took the former prisoner three months to get back to Germany, via Brazil, Spain and Italy.
Von Werra didn’t enjoy his freedom for long – he was killed later that year when his Messerschmitt plane suffered engine failure during a routine reconnaissance flight and crashed into the sea near the Dutch coast. The book of his exploits, The One That Got Away, was made into a 1957 film of the same name starring German actor Hardy Krüger as von Werra. Krüger was certainly qualified for the role – he had himself made a successful escape after having been taken prisoner by American forces at the end of the war.
Other famous POW escapes from Britain
As von Werra discovered, it’s extremely difficult to escape from Britain due to its island status. Indeed, only one German prisoner of the First World War is known to have succeeded. Gunther Plüschow, also a pilot, found himself interned at Donington Hall Camp in Leicestershire during the conflict. On 4 July 1915, he escaped with a comrade (who was later recaptured) by hiding under some garden chairs and then scaling the prisoner of war camp’s three fences at night. He threw pursuers off the scent by taking a train from Derby to Leicester then another to London, where he coolly behaved like a tourist, visiting the British Museum. He then passed himself off as a striking dockworker, before rowing out to a ferry called the SS Prinses Juliana, hauling himself on board and hiding in a lifeboat.
Awaking in Vlissingen, he dodged Dutch customs officials and boarded a train for Germany where he was briefly suspected of being a spy before being hailed as a hero. He survived the war but was killed in 1931 when the plane he was piloting crashed in Argentina.
