The Colditz Story

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Drue Heinz, and the little literary mystery of a wartime striptease". phoenixarkpress.com . http://phoenixarkpress.com/2010/12/15/drue-heinz-and-the-literary-mystery-of-a-wartime-striptease/ . Retrieved 10 October 2011. again (pictured, below right) and out. The tunnel broke through on the tiergarten side of the castle, but it was discovered before it could be used. Later the most popular way to pass the time was stoolball, a particularly rough version of rugby, where there were two stools at either end of the prisoners' courtyard and goals were scored by touching the opponent's stool with the ball. This game served as an outlet for pent-up aggression, and also provided noise to cover the sounds of tunnel-digging. [1]

Lieutenant James Porteous ( Jim Norton) – The Colditz librarian. Although having made two previous escape attempts whilst in transit, having been confined to Colditz Porteous becomes a somewhat staid and unenthusiastic escaper who appears to be happy to sit out the war. A schoolmaster before the war, Porteous strikes up a friendship with the (initially) reticent Sqn Ldr Tony Shaw. Brauner ( Peter Barkworth) – A chief plain-clothes Gestapo officer of unknown rank. He is intentionally intimidating with his precision and cold curiosity. He is not afraid to torture uncooperative subjects of his interrogations, as Phil Carrington discovers the hard way. Reinhold Eggers, Colditz: The German Story Translated and edited by Howard Gee. London: Robert Hale, 1961.When glamorous US war correspondent Lee Carson arrived with the troops, Bader offered her an exclusive interview, disappeared in a jeep bound for Paris and arrived in the UK two days later to a hero's welcome. Many of the events depicted in the series are based on fact. [12] Exceptions for dramatic purposes include the mentions of the Kommandant's son, Colonel Preston's wife and mother, and the completely fictional Major Mohn, who appears in series two. While there is not a direct one-to-one relationship between the real and televised characters, most of the televised characters are loosely based on one or several actual persons. The most obvious are Pat Grant ( Pat Reid) [13] and Hauptmann Ulmann ( Reinhold Eggers). Reid left the army on 29 March 1947, but remained a member of the Regular Army Reserve until reaching mandatory retirement age on 15 November 1965. On that day he was awarded the honorary rank of Major. [2] Ruft, Rainer (2017). "The Singen Route. The Stories of Nineteen Allied POW Soldiers and Their Escape to Ramsen, Switzerland, Between 1941 and 1943" . Retrieved 20 July 2023.

Colditz (Hodder & Stoughton, 1962): This was an omnibus edition of the first two books, and served as the basis for the BBC Television series Colditz, which ran from October 1972 until April 1974. Reid served as technical advisor to both the TV series and the 1955 film. Another was Giles Romilly, a Daily Express journalist and nephew of Winston Churchill, held against the Geneva Convention among the so-called "prominente", high-value prisoners kept as hostages.I can think of no sport that is the peer of escape, where freedom, life and loved ones are the prize of victory, and death the possible though by no means inevitable price of failure.' —Major P.R. Reid, 1952 Dr Eggers was a small man with warm brown eyes, quite unlike the character who portrayed him in the original BBC television series. Talking about the film he said: “The truth is much better. So much happened at Colditz that there was no need to dream up stories. There were never any Gestapo at the castle, no ‘planted agent’. However I am not so proud of the fact that there were 19 ‘home runs’ by prisoners while I was there, but I treated it like a game, a battle of wits. The Latter Days (Hodder & Stoughton, 1953), republished as Latter Days at Colditz, also published with the title Men of Colditz: [14] Whilst his first book ended with Reid and Wardle shaking hands under the first Swiss lamp post, the sequel follows the trials and tribulations of the escape committee until the eventual liberation of the castle by U.S. troops on 15 April 1945. It gives even more anecdotal insight into the events following his escape, including the French Tunnel and the Colditz Glider, or the occasion when the entire Dutch contingent unhooked their POW railway car from the rest of the train unbeknownst to the German guards. This last part of the Dutch prisoners cannot be confirmed by any Dutch reference about POWs. Reid probably refers to the mass escape of Dutch officers from train transports towards the end of the war when they were transported from Stanislau to Neubrandenburg. Then there was Julius Green, a tubby Jewish dentist from Glasgow who spent his incarceration fantasising about food while sending and receiving coded letters from the British intelligence services. "Bader and Reid had none of his modesty and bravery and self-irony," says Macintyre.

Commandos 2: Men of Courage — the mission, Castle Colditz, is based on the same castle and involves assisting the escape of all allied prisoners in the castle. The theatre revue towards the end of the film, which the inmates use to mask the escape by Reid and Winslow, begins with a parody of the Will Fyffe song I Belong to Glasgow, rendered I Belong to Colditz. Ian Carmichael and Richard Wattis, playing two Guards officers, perform a Flanagan and Allen routine, based on Underneath the Arches. British Lieutenant Airey M. S. Neave escaped January 5, 1942. Crawled through a hole in a camp theatre (after a prisoner performance) to a guardhouse and marched out dressed as a German soldier. He reached Switzerland two days later. This first successful British escape was a joint British-Dutch effort. Neave later joined MI9. Ernst Bergmann (1881–1945), professor of philosophy and pedagogy as well as a committed national socialist Reid's friend McGill approaches Richmond with a new plan but says he will only disclose it if Richmond will relieve Reid from his escape officer duties so that McGill and Reid can make the attempt together. Richmond agrees and McGill convinces Reid that the plan is feasible. The escapees will be disguised as German officers but will approach the guards from the direction of the German mess. McGill argues that previous attempts have failed because the escapees came from the wrong direction. The attempt will coincide with a revue being staged in the castle theatre, to which all senior German officers are being invited.

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Bader was the most famous prisoner in Colditz. He was the most famous fighting soldier on either side during the war. He was an extraordinary man, remarkably brave; he could inspire courage in others. After the war Reid was a diplomat and administrator before eventually returning to his prewar career in civil engineering. He also wrote about his experiences in two best-selling books, which became the basis of a film, TV series and board game. Reid joined the Territorial Army and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 16 June 1933 on the General List. He joined the Royal Army Service Corps ( Supplementary Reserve) with the same rank on 5 June 1935. He was promoted to Lieutenant exactly three years later on 5 June 1938. [2] It was a way of dignifying the prisoner-of-war experience. It was a very familiar myth and, like all myths, it was partly true. The story of the escapes from Colditz are fabulous: the ingenuity, the courage, the lateral thinking that went into them is extraordinary.