Colditz: The Full Story
P. R. Reid
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 0760346518
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Germans thought escape was impossible. These men proved them wrong.
Colditz Castle, located near Leipzig Germany, was the last stop for select Allied prisoners during World War II. It was here, a reportedly impregnable fortress, that the Germans sent all the prisoners who escaped from other prisons. Once within the walls, the Germans reasoned, escaping was impossible. Yet during the four-year period when the castle was used as a prison, over three hundred men escaped, thirty-one through Nazi Germany.
Prisoners from ten different Allied countries worked together to form a truly international escape academy. They created skeleton keys, forged German passes, drafted maps, and constructed all types of tools and machinery out of whatever they could find. The ingenuity of the prisoners knew no bounds: they tried everything from tunneling underneath the castle's walls to hiding in the garbage to disguising themselves as German officers. They even built a glider, which they never used. Resourcefulness and hard work won a few of them their freedom.
Author and former British Army officer, P.R. Reid, was one of the men who escaped from Colditz and made it home to tell the story. This paperback edition, introduced into the Zenith Military Classic series, introduces this thrilling WWII story to a new generation of readers. Four appendices at the end of book provide a full listing of prisoners and staff, all of the attempted escapes, the secret code used to communicate between prisoners and the outside world, and more.
"[T]his book is highly recommended reading."
--The New York Times
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On the train journey. Moreover, we had no escape material or reserve food (except potatoes!). The guards were watchful; we were always accompanied to the lavatory. We travelled sometimes in second class, sometimes in third, at all hours of the day and night. There were many changes and long waits, usually in the military waiting-rooms of stations. Passers-by eyed us curiously but without great animosity. Those who made closer contact by speaking with our guards were concerned at our carrying.
Would be a formidable proposition indeed. The eight British newcomers who arrived before Christmas were: two Anglican Army chaplains, Padres Heard (Dean of Peterhouse College, Cambridge) and Hobling; one Methodist chaplain, Padre Ellison Platt; Lieutenant-Colonel Guy German of the Royal Leicestershire Regiment; Lieutenants Peter Storie-Pugh of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, Teddy Barton of the Royal Army Service Corps, Tommy Elliot of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, and Geoffrey.
Private Woyzbun, P. Private THE DUTCH CONTINGENT Rank Regiment Van Ameijden Lieut KNIL Duijm, H. E. C. Andringa, B. Lieut KNIL Bajetto, H. C. Lieut KNIL Beets, T. Lieut KNIL Berlijn, A. P. Captain KNIL Bijvoet, F. J. Captain KNIL Boogh, W. K. Captain KNIL Braun, M. Lieut KNIL Claassen, F. M. F. Lieut KNIL Daams, J. H. Captain KNIL Dames, G. W. T. Lieut KNIL Donkers, H. G. Lieut KNIL Van Doorninck AZN, D. J. Lieut KM Douw van der Krap, C. L. J. F.
Between the Author and Professor R. V. Jones, Author of Most Secret War Appendix 5: Prisoners of War in the Western Theaters of the Second World War Bibliography Index Acknowledgments 1 Yesterday’s Shadows Autumn 1939 THE STORY OF Colditz Castle in the Second World War begins on the narrow peninsula of Hel. Hel is little more than a very long sandbank on the Baltic coast of the Polish Corridor, directly north of Gdynia. The story also begins in the person of Lieutenant Jędrzej Giertych,.
Two languages. During 1913 and 1914 when Jędrzej was ten years old, he attended a private boarding secondary school in Kielce, his mother’s native town in Poland, at that time under Russian rule. There he was taught in Polish, which was allowed after the revolution of 1905, but he had to learn Russian as a subject. When war broke out he could no longer attend school in Kielce, because it was in the war zone. Instead he went to a German school, a Lutheran cathedral college, at Tallinn, in Estonia,.