The Last Escaper: The Untold First-Hand Story of the Legendary Bomber Pilot, 'Cooler King' and Arch Escape Artist

298 Pages·2015·4.36 MB·English

by  Purdon

THE
LAST ESCAPER
Peter Tunstall, portrait by John Mansel
(see page 109).
THE
LAST ESCAPER
by
Peter Tunstall
DUCKWORTH OVERLOOK
This eBook edition 2014
First published in the UK and the US in 2014 by
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© 2014 by Peter Tunstall
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Peter Tunstall to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available
from the Library of Congress Published with assistance from the
Stickles Fund for Military History, Colgate University
ISBNs
UK: 978-0-7156-4923-7
Mobi: 978-0-7156-4970-1
ePub: 978-0-71564971-8
Library PDF: 978-0-7156-4972-5
Contents
Foreword by Major-General Corran Purdon
Introduction
1. Mission impossible
2. “Do you really fly?”
3. Never say die
4. Bomber pilot
5. Temporarily unsure of our position
6. “Kommen sie mit!”
7. From Barth to Spangenberg and Thorn
8. “What’s the plan?”
9. The only remedy, escape
10. Colditz
11. “O what a beautiful morning…”
Afterword
Index
Foreword
My great friend Dick Morgan—later to be my best man—and I succeeded in
escaping from Spangenberg Castle, only to be recaptured a fortnight later and
sent to Colditz after a term of solitary confinement. We were marched from
Colditz railway station to the Schloss. My first view of this ancient castle was
from the bridge over the river, and there it loomed above us. It was to house us
for nearly two years. To my surprise I could hear the sound of cheering and
pieces of material were being waved from the windows—which, as we drew
nearer, I could see were barred. The noise grew louder and by the time we
entered the cobbled courtyard it had grown to pandemonium, sounding like a
first-class riot.
The Germans had two tables in the yard, each placed against the wall below the
windows, and German officers sat there to take our particulars, photograph us
and so on. To my amazement, water bombs rained onto the tables, and then a
blazing palliasse was thrown down out of an upper window. Grinning faces
looked down, roaring insults at our captors. Eventually a riot squad doubled in,
wearing coal-scuttle helmets and carrying weapons. The Germans pointed their
rifles up at the prisoners above and the proceedings were then completed in
comparative quiet. Until that time we had only seen the well-behaved officer
prisoners at Westertimke, a naval officers’ camp near Bremen, and at
Spangenberg. Clearly, morale at Colditz was terrific and the prisoners were men
to be reckoned with and respected accordingly by their captors.
Eventually the German guards left and the inmates of Oflag IVC poured down
into the courtyard. “I’m Jack Keats,” said a smiling officer with glasses. “Come
and join our mess in the Belgian Quarters.” Dick and I were taken up a spiral
staircase with open doors off it through which we could see ablutions and
lavatories, to a top floor and along it to an end room. This contained a number of
double-tier bunks, plus some wooden tables and benches, and chairs made from
Red Cross crates.
“How do you do? I am Peter Tunstall.” A well-built RAF officer with a
moustache gave me a warm handshake. I learned that Peter Tunstall had just
masterminded the near-riot that had only quietened down since the arrival of the
armed German guards. Also that he was a fine shot with a water bomb and the
result of his barrage on the tables on which the Germans had laid out the
documents was chaotic and very effective.
Peter Tunstall obviously hated the Nazi system and he made this quite clear.
When I got to know him better, he told me that before taking part in one of his
first bombing raids, an official from the Air Ministry, who was lecturing him and
his crew on how to behave if captured, told him that his first duty was to escape
and his second was to be as big a bloody nuisance as possible. He was doing his
best to achieve both and had already clocked up a record score of days in solitary
confinement. Peter also told me that his Air Gunner, Sgt Joyce, an Irishman, was
a cousin of William Joyce—Lord Haw-Haw—who was later executed for treason
and whose body Sgt Joyce managed to get buried in Ireland after the war.
Peter Tunstall’s book is an easy and interesting read, which certainly describes
what it felt like to plan and actually carry out an escape; to be tired, hungry and
thirsty in an enemy country, trying to avoid contact with the local population.
After the war Peter served in the Royal Air Force until 1958, and later settled in
South Africa. A brave, charismatic and resourceful officer whose name will
always be associated with Oflag IVC in Colditz Castle. This is his story.
Major-General Corran Purdon, C.B.E., M.C., C.P.M.
Introduction
“Another escaping book?” you’re asking. Haven’t we done all that already? Surely
by this time we know everything we need to know about British escapers in the
Second World War. Indeed, hasn’t it become a bit of a cliché? With the theme to
The Great Escape being played by fans at every England international football
match; with the cardboard cut-out figures of the dashing POW and the dim-
witted Hun having become, for the British, the nearest things to symbols of their
respective nations; with the name Colditz instantly recognisable—aren’t we in
danger of stereotyping the Second World War, or even caricaturing it, as little
more than a jolly good lark?
Well, yes—and that’s the point.
I too have read a great many of these escape stories. Some are classics of war
literature and their accounts of life behind the wire ring very true to me. Others,
to put it kindly, tell us more about the fantasy lives of their authors. But all of
them, or nearly all, were written and published at a time very close to the events
they describe. Their authors were still young men, with a young man’s
perspective on experiences still fresh and vivid in their minds. They were also
producing their accounts at a moment when readers expected a certain kind of
narrative about the war: one that played up the notion of the victory having been
won because of the Allies’ (especially the British) superiority, rather than, as we
now know, because of good fortune and the viciousness and short-sightedness of
our enemies. Book-buyers weren’t interested in hearing about hunger, pain,
loneliness or fear. They wanted tales of excitement and adventure, of derring-do
and ultimate success. And that, by and large, is what they got. It’s hardly
surprising that escape books became a distinct genre. Nor is it accidental that the
most famous ones—Pat Reid’s The Colditz Story, Eric Williams’ The Wooden
Horse, Airey Neave’s They Have Their Exits—were accounts of the rare break-
outs in which the protagonists made it back to Britain, rather than the more
typical ones where the would-be escapers were recaptured, or their attempts were
foiled after months of difficult and dangerous work, sometimes before they’d
even got outside the wire.
This book is different. There are three reasons why I’ve written it. The first is
that it is the very last of its kind that will ever appear. To the best of my
knowledge, there are fewer than half a dozen of us still alive who were in Colditz
during the Second World War. The book you hold in your hands is the final
testimony that will ever be given by those who experienced these things for
themselves.
The second is that this is not a Boy’s Own Story. The subject matter is too
serious for that. It’s often forgotten that for us, the war was not a game. At the
age of twenty, a time when the most that young people usually have to worry
about is their exams, or what to do at the weekend, my friends and I were thrown
into a grim battle for national survival, under circumstances that made it all but
certain that we ourselves would not survive.
The figures tell their own story. For every one hundred bomber airmen who
flew on operations during the war, fifty-one died in action, nine were killed in
flying accidents, twelve became prisoners of war. Others were seriously injured
and never flew again. Less than a quarter survived undamaged, physically at least,
to see the end of the war. For those like me, who were in it from the very
beginning, the odds were far worse. To put it another way, the number of officers
from Bomber Command killed during the Second World War was higher than
the total number of officers in the British Army killed during the First.
If we didn’t see the war as a lark, still less did we consider our captivity in that
light. The experience of becoming a POW was a devastating one, especially for
those captured at the early stages of their operational career who felt they hadn’t
had a good swipe at the enemy. There were a lot of people in that category: forty
percent of all losses occurred during a bomber crew’s first five missions. Rightly
or wrongly, many who were captured believed they’d failed in some way. We felt
our sense of duty very strongly in those days, and one of the things that drove
hard-core escapers forward was an overwhelming sense of urgency to get back in
the fight. For just the chance to do so, we paid a high price. Escaping was a
dangerous business. We were constantly warned that we could be shot while
trying to get out of Germany, and some were. For my seven escape attempts, I
was court-martialled by the Germans five times; spent a grand total of 415 days
in solitary confinement (an all-comers’ record among British POWs); and was
placed by my captors on the exclusive list of Deutschfeindlich (irredeemably anti-
German) prisoners. Rumour had it that if Germany lost the war, the people
whose names appeared on that list would not be permitted to survive. When fifty
recaptured British prisoners were murdered after the Great Escape of spring