Tour
Introduction
At the end of the 19th century, following the Crimean and Austro-Prussian wars, the Hague Conventions were initiated by Tsar Nicholas II, so that politicians from all over the world could thrash out the legalities of war, particularly with reference to captured soldiers. Chapter two of the convention, which was eventually signed in 1907, states that:
‘Prisoners of war are in the power of the hostile Government, but not of the individuals or corps who capture them. They must be humanely treated. All their personal belongings, except arms, horses and military papers, remain their property.’
The principal countries that would go on to comprise both the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the United Kingdom), and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) in World War I, signed this document, and so were bound by international law to abide by it. However, nobody expected the scale of World War I – a war so destructive and all encompassing that it would one day rank high among the deadliest conflicts of all time. It was a dark and desperate time, and in the event, the standards laid out in The Hague Convention might as well have been written on toilet paper for all the relevance it had to the realities of POW life.
Within the first six months of the conflict, 1.3 million prisoners were being held in Europe, and accommodating these prisoners became a huge problem for all countries involved. Allegations of cruelty and neglect were commonplace. Living quarters were cramped; food, scarce; sanitary hygiene, non-existent; disease, rife. Over the course of the war, conditions only got worse, and though things were a little more tolerable for officers, who weren’t forced to work and received many more food parcels from back home than most, many wanted out.
In fact, officers were more likely to try and make a break for it than their less qualified counterparts. For them, it was a matter of honour. Many considered it an officer’s duty to try and escape, and the fact that many were in better physical shape made a home run more likely. Add to that the fact that more officers spoke a second language, and so found it easier to navigate towns and cities on their route, and you can see why few regular soldiers made it home. Still, even a failed attempt caused the enemy hassle and expense, and made a dent on the captors’ morale. A successful attempt made an impact on an international scale. It proved to everyone that their side wasn’t beaten, that their spirits hadn’t been broken, and that was important. If the people back home believed their boys could outsmart the hun, even against all the odds, it made them more positive and, probably, more productive too.
Over the course of the war there were many attempts at escape – an estimated 313,400. Of these, only about 67,565 succeeded, but that’s still a very large number. So, why haven’t we all heard the stories of these brave men who mounted such escapes? Maybe one day, that will change. After all, the stories themselves are fascinating. How often these days do we encounter real-life heroism? Not often. But in World War I in general, and in these POW camps specifically, people were presented on a daily basis with a real chance to become the hero, to live on their wits, to outsmart the enemy, to put their life on the line for a friend, and they did. Often, and without drama.
How many of us could do what they did, I wonder? Imagine coming together with a group of your friends to dig a tunnel 40 metres long, at night, in complete secret and with nothing but spoons and the odd table knife to dig with. The air down there is toxic, it’s full of carbon monoxide and other noxious gases. You must rely entirely on your friend standing guard outside to pump in oxygen, using a homemade system of cobbled together biscuit tins and bellows made out of an old jacket. If the air system breaks, you will choke to death. If the tunnel collapses, you’ll be buried alive. If you’re caught, you might well be shot – or tortured until you give up your friends and then shot. And, if you’re smart, cunning, determined and fit enough to make it out alive, you still have hundreds of miles of enemy territory to cross before you finally make it to safety. Could you do it? How about if you weighed a third less than you do now, if you’d been starved or forced to work on the land for 12 hours a day for the last three months? What if you’d lost everything, all hope of a future, all faith in a benevolent God. Could you still come out fighting?
Men like M. C. Simmons and E. H. Jones literally risked everything, not to make it back home to their families – many tried to go back to the front line after making a home run – but to stick it to the enemy. To prove to them, and also to themselves, that they could not be broken. That is what I take from these incredible stories of bravery, faith, ingenuity and friendship. In our own small ways we’re all faced with barbed wire of one form or another in our daily lives. What counts is how you choose to overcome it. This book is dedicated to all those brave men and women who gave their lives for our freedom, particularly those who lost their best years in prison, through no fault of their own. We will remember them.
Gunther Pluschow: Escape from Donington Park
In 1915, the aviator and adventurer Gunther Pluschow became the only German soldier to successfully escape from a British POW camp in either World War I, or World War II. His story is almost too incredible to be believed, not least because it includes not just one great escape, but two. It begins far from home, in China, where German efforts to colonize areas of East Asia were going from bad to worse.
During the
