Not quite a film review: The Wooden Horse

 

 

Eric Williams, who in 1949 published a fictionalised account of his ingenious escape from Stalag Luft III’s East Compound along with Michael Codner and Oliver Philpot, penned the screenplay of The Wooden Horse, based on his novel. The 1950 release was not the first British cinematic treatment of the captivity theme but it is certainly one of the earliest and better known. I won’t bother providing a plot synopsis, and I am not even going to stick faithfully to the narrative order of the film. If you haven’t read the book and want to know what happens, just read the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wooden_Horse.

While this is not a review, I will mention that, of the five POW films I have viewed—Stalag 17 (1953) The Colditz Story (1955), Danger Within (1959), and The Great Escape (1963)—The Wooden Horse is my least favourite. For a story which has much natural drama and tension—will the Germans discover the tunnel? Will the kriegies execute a successful escape?—I found this rendition quite dull. Certainly, it displayed typical British restraint in its presentation and storytelling, and it was very slow. Perhaps I have been spoiled by modern heart-thumping thrillers where the agonisingly excruciating tension build-up is emphasised by a powerful score. Here, music is strangely absent as a device to heighten dramatic tension, and my pulse hardly fluttered above its normally languid state. But despite my personal taste for paced-up narratives, the slow tempo appropriately mirrors the plodding monotony of POW life.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

Regardless of the limp impression it made on me as entertainment, The Wooden Horse was Britain’s third most popular film in 1950. I don’t know what the Australian box office was like but it was well received. The Catholic Weekly appreciated the ‘high adventure’ of a story told with ‘restraint and conviction’. (The Catholic Weekly, 14 June 1951.) Adelaide’s News considered it a ‘good, honest, thrilling adventure story, filmed without any fancy tricks of technique (News, 23 February 1951). Launceston’s Examiner deemed it a ‘good British film’ with an ‘exciting, true story of the most remarkable POW escape’ (Examiner, 11 November 1950) and Melbourne’s Advocate considered it a ‘thoroughly good film’. Indeed, ‘the suspense is appalling’ with ‘a thousand chances of a slip leading to detection’. All in all, the Advocate declared, it was a film you ‘simply must see’. (Advocate, 25 October 1951.) 

Despite the enthusiastic response, it left at least one contemporary Australian reviewer with mixed feelings. While praising the excellent cast, noting that it was ‘a highly entertaining film and a moving record of an escape from a German prison camp’, conceding that there were ‘some tense moments and from the commencement of the tunnelling the film grips’, and recommending the film as ‘arresting … and one well worth seeing’, The Newcastle Sun’s reviewer considered that ‘it fails to impress as a film of such nature should’. The Sun helpfully speculated that the fault could have been in the way the men and captivity was presented. ‘Instead of capturing … that feeling of despair and utter longing to break free, the producers have made it seem that Stalag Luft was a happy place with very humane German guards.’ (The Newcastle Sun, 16 June 1951.) Not only do these men have guards who can be subverted through bribery and coercion, they also have a benign commandant. Explaining off the call for vaulting volunteers, the Senior British Officer tells the Kommandant, ‘Gym class, you know’. ‘Always this craze for exercise’, responded the Kommandant, as he unwittingly allowed plans for the wooden horse to progress.

Leeton’s The Murrumbidgee Irrigator, however, gained a different impression of prison life. Their reviewer considered that the film highlighted the ‘living death’ of life ‘behind the wire entanglements (The Murrumbidgee Irrigator, 10 July 1941) while The Catholic Weekly recognised the ‘boredom and frustration of active men immobilised’ and considered that the ‘narrative quietly brings out the remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness of the prisoners in coping with the limitations of their situation’. (The Catholic Weekly, 14 June 1951.)

One group of men considered the film a ‘must see’. On 2 October 1951, nineteen former Stalag Luft III kriegies—some who had not seem each other since liberation, and including Senator Justin O’Byrne who had flown in from Tasmania especially—trekked along to Hoyts in Melbourne for a reunion dinner and a screening of the film.

 

 

Justin O'Byrne

 

In doing so, they revealed an Australian connection to the wooden horse escape. According to Roberts Dunstan of the Melbourne Herald (3 October 1951), Jock McKechnie, who turned his carpentry skills to making seating and stage props for the East Compound theatre, also helped make the vaulting horse—his hands still bore the scars from the crude tools he had to use—and Bryce Watson slept in Eric Williams’ bed to cover his absence on the night of the escape.

 

 

Jock McKechnie

 

The film and reunion provided a good excuse to talk about old times, both the good, the bad, and the humorous and, when they were presented with a souvenir copy of Eric Williams’ book, Tony Gordon had his signed by all his former friends, and kept that memento all his life.

 

 

Tony Gordon

 

Courtesy of Drew Gordon

The Herald is silent on what these men thought of the film but I am sure that many scenes resonated, such as crossing off the days on the calendar—‘home for Xmas 194?’.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

 

Certainly, Hoyts’ special guests would have appreciated the many examples of kriegie ingenuity depicted in the film, especially, perhaps, Tony Gordon, who gained a reputation in his room as a ‘tin basher’, someone who could make anything out of next to nothing. He appears in the East Compound history for his work with metal and in the North Compound history for repairing and constructing secret radios.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

The film, which is set in Stalag Luft III’s East Compound in the summer of 1943, opens with some instructive text: ‘It is the constant hope of nearly every prisoner of war—if not, indeed, his duty—to escape and rejoin his unit.’ This establishes a rationale for why so many men willingly helped the escapers. Indeed, it was obvious from the beginning that the Wooden Horse effort would only ever see a handful of men escape, and only by the apparent good grace and selfless participation of the many. But why?

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

 

Bert Comber explained to his daughter that it was his duty to divert the Germans’ attention away from the war effort by focusing resources on recapturing escapees.

 

 

Bert Comber

 

Peter Tunstall, who was not in Stalag Luft III but who was an inveterate escaper, recalled attending a lecture by Great War escape expert Squadron Leader AJ Evans: ‘the third thing really stuck with me. It was, he said, the duty of a prisoner of war “to be as big a bloody nuisance as possible to the enemy”. Those were his actual words. It seemed a pretty unequivocal instruction and I never forgot it.’ (Peter Tunstall: The Last Escaper, p. 106)

I have collected many examples of the captive airman’s belief in his duty to escape and, even if Thou Shalt Escape was not specifically one of the Airman’s Ten Commandments, there was certainly a belief that they would have to answer to their actions or inactions as prisoners when they were liberated. Indeed, King’s Regulations required that ‘a court of enquiry … be convened in every case [where an officer or airman had been taken prisoner] to investigate the conduct of the individual concerned and the circumstance of his capture’. But, as the war progressed, given the numbers of aircrew who found themselves ‘in the bag’, the Royal Air Force accepted that King’s Regulation 1324 had become ‘an impractical counsel of perfection’ and decided that no court of enquiry would be needed if the air officer commanding “was satisfied that no blame attached to the individual”. The early captive airmen who set the tone for every camp escape organisation, however, would have had no way of knowing this, and perhaps did not want to trust to the AOC’s good sense, even if they did.

Fear of being declared LMF—lacking moral fibre—may well have had something to do with it. When I interviewed Cy Borsht, who spent the last months of the war in Stalag Luft III’s Belaria compound, I noticed in his wartime log book a wonderful watercolour of him tunnelling. This was in the post-Great Escape climate and, knowing that even the camp authorities had (ostensibly) supported the German decree of no more escaping or face the deadly consequences, I asked him why he was involved in escape activity. He told me, ‘You know, it’d be considered a bit of a coward’s way out to say “No, thanks, I don’t want to escape”. ‘So there was a certain amount of peer pressure then, really, in that if you said no, you would have felt that they thought you were a coward?’, I asked. ‘Absolutely’, Cy responded.

 

Courtesy of Cy Borsht

 

Cy Borsht

Other factors may have motivated the vaulters, those who kept watch, those who created diversions, those who disposed of the diggings, those who risked much by forging papers and making uniforms despite the knowledge that only a handful would ever make a bid for freedom. There may have been an element of altruism for some, doing something for the common good, or, as Bert Comber and Peter Tunstall believed, an obligation of the active airman to continue operating behind barbed wire by creating as much disruption to the enemy as possible. But I think too, we can never underestimate the power of boredom—the need for ‘something to do’—as a motivating factor.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

In this cinematic representation of life in captivity, there is no doubt that camp life is mind-numbing, claustrophobic, and dreary. The barbed wire and sentry tower are almost the first images the viewer sees. Then there are the sombre looking, pyjama-clad POWs looking out the window at the same old, same old, before dully returning to their bunks. Other kriegies lay sleeping; some look morose in slumber, some are dreaming happy thoughts. One dreams of the crash that took him out of action and into captivity. All are trapped in a crowded room, in a crowded camp and yet they try to imprint a little of their personality on their environment by evoking their former lives. They pin pictures onto the wooden walls: an aeroplane soaring freely in the sky and family photos of wives and children. To reinforce the visual, the first words the viewer hears are not a lively dialogue, but an internal monologue, focussing on the dissatisfaction and monotony of camp life in close quarters: ‘I knew it all so well’, says Peter Howard (Leo Genn)—who represents Eric Williams in the film—as he ‘tensed’ himself in anticipation of the all too familiar morning activity of his bunk mate. The never ceasing routine: ‘breakfast please; you’re cook’; thinly slicing the hunk of bread to make it go round; the grouching man; the call of ‘goon in the block’ as a guard passes through; the communal showers; and parcel day’s anticipation of the prospect of a Red Cross package or much-desired letters from home.

 

 

Someone's vision of Red Cross Comforts.

 

 These set pieces are all standard fare when presenting the tedium of captivity as they establish what life was like in a POW camp. But while they show that life was boring and colourless, they also indicate that it was safe and the prisoners were relatively secure. In this world (if not in reality) they do not suffer physical strictures and mental trauma is only hinted at.

This film, as do all in the prisoner-of-war genre, presents another side of captivity. The captive might be out of action, but he is still very much an active airman, albeit behind barbed wire. We see guards who have been suborned by the prisoners. We view the well-rehearsed impertinence towards the guards—‘Deutschland kaput’—and later, the motley crew presenting themselves at appell (roll call) in a mixture of shorts, pyjamas, and uniform oddments: definitely not what you would expect from morning parade at any RAF station in England, but par for the course for active airmen ‘sticking’ it to the Germans. Here we see the active airmen in many guises: the duty stooge, logging in the actions of the ferrets as they try to detect escape activity; the digger emerging from a tunnel, declaring ‘40 feet today’; and Peter Howard and John Clinton (Anthony Steel)—Michael Codner in real life—walking the circuit, and planning another possible scheme.

I’ve mentioned some of the reason for a man’s involvement in escape activity but there was also something deeper, something almost visceral motivating him to risk an authorised exit from the POW camp. ‘This is a hell of a life, Peter’, says Clinton, and Peter Howard would ‘give anything to get out of this place—even if it was only for a few days. Just to do the ordinary things again’; just to enjoy the simple things like a phone call, walking on grass, or even a carpet. The desire for freedom, to run your own life, to fulfil your own desires without constraint, is perhaps the greatest motivator. But so too is the desire to accomplish something in life, and that is why we hear so often of prisoners of war who undertook academic studies to lay foundations for future careers or designed homes of their dreams. The fictional Peter Howard touched on something that disturbed almost every real life prisoner of war: ‘Sometimes I wonder if it’s better or worse for the married chaps—at least you’ve got something waiting for you. I’ve got a feeling that life’s passing me by. By the time I get back it’ll be too late. It’s not doing anything—not even fighting!’

And then, of course, he and Clinton come up with their own fighting plan. No one, of course, can be in any doubt that the Wooden Horse scheme is a military operation. The plan has to be endorsed by the escape committee and Senior British Officer, resources have to be devoted to it, and the whole thing is carried out under military lines. They may have worn pyjamas and shorts on parade, but the night they go scrounging for materials, they wear battle dress. Admittedly the darker clothes make them harder to see, but military dress reinforces that these men are on operations; they are once again active airmen.

One of the hallmarks of the active airman is ‘kriegie ingenuity’. Here, Wing Commander Cameron is the president of the Kriegie Construction Company. Ostensibly, and with full goon approval, he is making an air conditioning plant for the hut in his fully-kitted out work room. But any air conditioning mechanism will find itself co-opted to the latest tunnel scheme, and Cameron’s endorsed carpentry bench will also turn out tunnel supports and other sundry escape aids, including, after a little chat with Peter Howard, a wooden vaulting horse.

Horse in place, all that is needed now, are vaulters. On the face of it, the film appears to present a disconnect with what we think we know about the physical appearance of the prisoners. For instance, we know that German rations were barely adequate and had to be supplemented by Red Cross parcels. We know that meals were eked out by culinary ingenuity and—in times of Red Cross plenty—the prisoners probably had enough calories per day to get by on. They were fit enough and played sport but surely they were far from perfect athletic specimens?

 

 

From Cy Borsht's wartime log book, courtesy of Cy Borsht.

Yet, in this film, the vaulters all look fit and healthy; they are portrayed as Adonis types who had no apparent problems with their rations, and who could effortlessly march off the sports ground carrying a man hidden in a wooden horse.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

 

So perfect were these cinematic versions of the POWs that, apparently, Peter Butterworth, who was one of the real-life vaulters, could not get a part in the film because he looked neither athletic nor heroic enough! But it seems that the film’s vaulters may have correctly depicted the real vaulters as there is pictorial evidence of some agile, healthy-looking athletic types putting on a strong-man gymnastic show in Stalag Luft III in November 1943, just after the real-life wooden horse breakout.

 

 

Courtesy of Drew Gordon.

 

It doesn’t take too much imagination to picture those chaps vaulting all day, with others carting the horse and hidden man around the compound. So, with the film—and photos like this which appeared in one of the pictorial accounts of life in Stalag Luft III—we can well see why some of the reviewers had their doubts about the ‘living death’, and we can well understand why there was a widespread post-war perception (amongst those who were not there), that captivity in Germany was a bit of a doddle.

As we know, the prisoners line up willingly to jump the horse while the diggers dig. The ‘good turnout’ at the beginning is acknowledged, but so too is the probability that that might not be the case in a few weeks’ time. And indeed, the novelty wears off. Howard and Clinton note that they have to get a move on with the digging because they couldn’t have the boys jumping for nothing. But of course, the boys were jumping for nothing as they had no personal stake in this operation; they were vaulting so that someone else could escape, not them. The good will extended beyond the sports ground as those in Howard’s and Clifton’s mess were obliged to take up the housework slack as the diggers time and again missed out on doing their chores. One man, however, embodying quite human resentment, ‘chucked a tanti’ about Clifton not pulling his weight. The solution was that Howard and Clifton would form their own mess. (If they starved, it would be their own fault!) But the scene displayed more than just a disgruntled roommate. It demonstrated that there was a limit to the good-natured cooperation that underpinned this escape effort. All was later forgiven, however. The disgruntled officer handed over some German money to the escapers, as it ‘might come in handy’. But was that an indication that he regretted his earlier behaviour, or was it an acknowledgement that every man had a part to play in an escape attempt—regardless of the costs to the many so that the few could make a bid for freedom—because of what the enterprise represented? Certainly, despite the ongoing difficulty of maintaining the vaulters’ enthusiasm, when things start going wrong, everyone pulls together to ensure success. When one of the jumpers notices a hole created after a partial tunnel fall, he pretends to be injured and another bandages his leg to cover-up the playacting, and the hole is safely repaired. It seems, for the main part, that personal interest was put aside for the benefit of the escapers and, in that, we see a strong element of altruism.

While one of the rationales for escape is the disruption it will cause to the enemy—and this was certainly the case for North Compound’s Great Escape—the cinematic wooden horse venture does not appear to generate much of a hue and cry after the escape of Howard and Clifton, along with Philip Rowe (David Tomlinson)—Oliver Philpot in real life—the third man in the enterprise brought in at a late stage to help speed things along. But the many helpers suffered for their support of the three escapers. While Howard and Clifton are catching their train, the ‘meanwhile-back-at-the-camp’ scene reveals the penalties suffered by those who helped. Weekly showers are stopped, the camp theatre is closed for the duration, all sport is forbidden and, of course, access to the wooden horse is denied. (In an ambiguous conclusion to this segment of the film, the men cheer as the horse is carted away. Are they so sick to the sight of it that they can do little but cheer, or are they acknowledging the successful escape?)

Before I sign off, I want to look at how women are portrayed in this film. For the most part, women were physically absent from captivity. Bill Fordyce, one of the Australian Great Escapers (who was caught in the tunnel when the alert was sounded) once remarked that ‘except for looking through the wire at the German censors, we hadn’t seen a woman for about four years’.

 

 

Bill Fordyce

 

Even so, women were ever present and this film subtly reinforces that women were a significant part of captivity, even in their absence. I mentioned earlier the family photos that adorn the room. The photographic images evoke memories of happier times with wife, girl friend or fiancée. But the chaste life partner was not the only rendition of womanhood in this cinematic version of Stalag Luft III. While taking a shower, the men sing a song declaring they don’t want to go to war, they’d rather stay at home and drink with the daughters of the high born ladies. The poster calling for vaulting volunteers depicts an agile prisoner with wings on his feet, lasciviously chasing a woman in a bikini. ‘Peace in our time? Get fit now!’ exhorts the caption, the unsaid text being so that when you are out of here, you will be fit enough to catch the maiden of your dreams.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

Perhaps surprisingly women actually appear in this film. After they have successfully exited camp, Howard and Clifton purchase their train tickets from a woman.

 

 

Lifted from the film, courtesy of my trusty little 21st century version of the box brownie.

 

We see a hausfrau sweeping the street outside a house in Lubeck, and an old bat sells matches to the escapees. When they arrive at a safe house, the door is opened by an attractive woman, the sister of their escort, who will be their host while arrangements are made for the next stage of their journey. When they are safely in Sweden, they enter a restaurant full of well-dressed, lunching ladies. There they meet Philip Rowe who is in the company of a very glamourous woman: ‘such a charming girl’. This inclusion of women could be construed as gratuitous, perhaps trying to make a film geared mainly towards men appeal to their wives and / or girlfriends. It could also reflect a certain amount of wish fulfilment: the prisoners dreamed of returning to a world or women and lo! Here they are. 

Peter Howard might have wanted to escape for the very simple things in life like carpet and grass under his feet, but he was presented with much more in the final scenes of this film: flowers on the tables of a plush restaurant, a smart suit, money and coupons (‘three courses only’) at said plush restaurant, and, as he watchs two uniformed Germans and their female companions looking on disapprovingly, the satisfaction of knowing that he and his friends had stuck it to the Germans. ‘I believe they think we shouldn’t be here’.

The Wooden Horse may be a cinematic rendition of a fictionalised version of a real escape but even so, much of it stacks up well against true accounts of life in Stalag Luft III. It demonstrates that escape is a significant part of captivity for all sorts of reasons and that prisoners of war remained active airmen, still on operations, despite being behind barbed wire. They displayed ingenuity and prided themselves on getting the best of their captors. Significantly, this film also demonstrates that getting the best of the Germans was very much a team effort. Duty was a large part of it, but there were other rationales, including the desire to continue the battle behind barbed wire. And—if you ignore the gratuitous inclusion of women in the post-escape scenes—it indicates that women had a significant and ever present place in the lives of prisoners of war. But The Wooden Horse also reinforces the impression that prisoners of war in Europe had a fairly decent time of it in captivity.

 

 

 Lifted from 'the net'. 

Charles Horace 'Digger' Fry

I'll be heading north again in a few weeks on another research trip. I tend to do a lot of prep before I interview family members and, as part of that process, I've put together a brief biog/profile of Charles Horace Fry, one of the Australians in Stalag Luft III that I hope to discover more about during that trip. Be warned, it really is brief! 

 

Charles Horace Fry was a graduate of 20 Course, 1 Flying Training School, Point Cook. He was ranked 16th with 70.9% and awarded his pilot’s flying badge. He did not have a spotless record, however. His General Conduct Sheet was endorsed with the offence: ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and Air Force discipline in that he dropped his rifle on parade’. He was confined to barracks for three days. 

Photo accompanying application for RAAF cadetship. RAAF Service file, NAA.

On 17 July 1937, he embarked for the United Kingdom on the Orient Royal liner RMS Orama and was granted a short service commission in the RAF the next month.

(Charlie Fry was on the same course as two Australians who were killed in the Battle of Britain, Stuart Walch and Jack Kennedy. In an earlier draft of Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain, I included details of the 20 Course initiation ceremony, conducted by the senior cadets of 19 Course, including one Pat Hughes. Because I was seriously over word limit, I had to delete the description. I am now very pleased that I can include it here in Charlie Fry story: On 24 July, a cold Victorian winter’s night, 19 Course took the disrobed 20 Course juniors down to the seaplane hangars. There, they painted them with dope—a flammable lacquer applied to aircraft to weatherproof the fabric stretched over the airframe—and branded some with a cold, and some with a hot, iron. They then sprayed them up and down a ladder with a fireman’s hose before throwing them into the icy sea. Finally, the hapless new boys—including Charles Fry—were knighted on a block of ice with an electric shock. ‘Whoopee’, wrote Pat Hughes in his diary, as he signed off on his description of the night’s overly aggressive high jinks.) 

Point Cook, 20 Course. Courtesy RAAF Museum Point Cook 

After completing his training in the UK, and a brief stint in 32 Squadron, Charlie joined 112 Squadron. The squadron transferred to Egypt in May 1939, flying Gladiators. 

From Egypt, to Greece, to Crete, and from Gladiators to Hurricane, and a lot of combat. ‘Crete was being subjected to Stuka attacks and the sky was often thick with Messerschmitts’, Charlie Fry recalled. And, then, on 16 May 1941, ‘a fateful day’, Charlie, or Digger, as he was known almost from the time he set foot in England, was in battle yet again.

‘They appeared again in the very early morning, followed by JU88s, Dornier 17s, and Ju52s. Crete was subjected to a great softening-up before the troop-carrying gliders came on the scene. The sky also turned white with the canopies of German parachutists. The tide of our war had turned. My Hurricane lay in ruins after I was shot down, but I survived’.  

He had survived, but was wounded and unable to fly. He made himself useful, though, and set about building pens to protect the squadron’s aircraft. As Crete fell to the Germans, and their aerodrome was taken, Charlie attempted to construct another strip in the hills. When he realised there was no hope, he organised the evacuation of the remaining squadron members. As one of his squadron friends recalled, ‘He used to lay up in the hills during the day, and at night he would take them down to the beaches on the off-chance of a warship being around. I know there were occasions when he could have made his escape but he preferred, as is the duty of an officer, to remain with his men to the last—good old Digger.’

Charlie succeeded in getting off two officers and three airmen before he was captured on 6 June 1941. He was the last 112 Squadron officer remaining on Crete. And so, lauded his friend, ‘he remained at his post to the last. A good pilot, a good officer, and an excellent leader of men’.

He was a flight commander then but, if Charlie had made it back to Egypt, his friend was convinced he would have commanded the squadron. (And just think how differently things might have turned out if Clive Caldwell had not taken command in January 1942?)

If he had ended up as CO of 112 Squadron, there is no doubt that Charlie would have continued to lead by example. His service in Greece was later acknowledged by a Greek DFC and a British DFC for, according to press reports, ‘a terrific air battle during the Nazi invasion of Greece’ during which ‘he engaged 15 hostile aircraft single-handed, destroying one and damaging another.’ He had moved a long way from his Point Cook training days when he had been guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and Air Force discipline’. When announcing the award, the Air Minister, Mr McEwen, noted that ‘Flight Lieutenant Fry had shot down six enemy aircraft in serial combat’. A quick consultation of Aces High indicates that wasn’t quite accurate, but it certainly reflected the spirit of a fine, battle-hardened pilot who survived battle, bale-out and evasive activity ‘only to be taken prisoner. So I spent the next four years in Germany as the “guest” of the Third Reich.’

Cropped from Charles Fry's German POW card.

Charlie arrived at Dulag Luft on 8 August, and sent a note to his parents back in Newcastle, NSW, that he was well and in good health. That arrived on Christmas Day 1941, along with a letter from his squadron friend telling them about his heroic activities on Crete just before he was captured. From Dulag Luft, he was transferred to Oflag XC Lubeck, Oflag VIB Warburg, and on 11 May 1942, he arrived in Stalag Luft III. But Sagan was getting crowded and on 7 September he was one of the group purged to Oflag XXIB Schubin. But he was back again at Stalag Luft III on 2 April 1943.

Schubin. Left to Right Ron Garside, John Ruffel, Popham Wallace-Tarry, obscure, Owen Green, Aiden Crawley, and Digger Fry. Private collection. 

Charlie is mentioned in the East Compound history as helping to make a desk which hid the secret radio. He did a lot more to keep himself occupied during his time in Stalag Luft III, but that story will be revealed in due course. 

Charles Fry, 1945, after his DFC investiture. Lifted from the internet.

Film 'review' with a difference: Danger Within

This isn’t a post about Australians in Stalag Luft III, but it does cover some of the universal aspects of the POW experience and so, it counts!

 

It is well acknowledged that popular perceptions of prisoners of war in Europe have been shaped by their filmic representation. I’ve only viewed three of the classics—Stalag 17 (1953) The Colditz Story (1955) and The Great Escape (1963)—and only through the perspective of light Sunday afternoon entertainment. Accordingly, I thought I should work my way through some of the classics of the prisoner-of-war genre just to see for myself what aspects of captivity have been presented to a film-living public. Thanks to Clare Makepeace, I have a list and I decided to start with the 1959 film, Danger Within and thought I would write up my ‘findings’.

 

 

There is no need for me to provide a detailed account of Danger Within’s plot and filmmaking—there are very good ones at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Within) and https://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/danger-within-1959-tuesdays-overlooked-film/ —but I do discuss some important plot points and, while I don’t reveal the ‘bad guy’ I do drop a very big hint and there are lots of spoilers.

As far as I am aware, Danger Within has not been released on DVD and so I had the ‘joy’ of watching a very snow-ridden VHS that was close to the end of its useful life. The blurb on the VHS case exclaims ‘400 plan to escape—one plans to betray!’ and the liner notes claim that it is ‘an exciting drama set in an Italian POW camp during WWII’. Well, I don’t know if I would go quite so far as to say ‘exciting’ but I certainly enjoyed it, perhaps because of my research interest; I am not entirely sure I would have been enticed to watch it otherwise. Significantly for my research, the liner notes also state that the film is based on the true exploits of producer Colin Lesslie and writer Michael Gilbert, the author of the book on which the film is based. Gilbert joined the Honourable Artillery Company when war broke out and served in North Africa and Italy. He was captured in 1943, imprisoned in northern Italy and escaped after the Italian surrender. [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/feb/10/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries]

 

 

 

 I read Danger Within—released as Death in Captivity in Britain—a few years ago before I started my current research. I purchased it at a specialist crime fiction shop. Given the blurb ‘When a man is found suffocated to death in an escape tunnel under impossible conditions, British POWs turn detective’, I expected a classic ‘who dunnit’ but found it difficult going and less than engaging, so promptly put it at the back of my bookcase. From what I can recall, there are considerable differences between book and film, including some name changes, more of an interest in crime solving, and the name of the theatre production which covers the mass escape. Given I enjoyed the film, I must revisit the book at some stage if, for no other reason, than to see how the raw material of the book morphed into the aforementioned ‘exciting drama’.

Danger Within is a classic of the British prisoner-of-war film genre and sits alongside other iconic British productions of this era such as The Wooden Horse (1950) and The Colditz Story. I may be researching Stalag Luft III but it seems that there is little difference between this Italian camp and the Luftwaffe’s showcase prisoner of war camp for airmen. Indeed, with only minor script changes (and investment in air force uniforms) the film could very well have been set in Stalag Luft III. Like Stalag Luft III, this fictional camp is a veritable united nations. There are British officers, of course, a Greek officer, and a piano accordion-playing Frenchman. Vincent Ball, as Captain Pat Foster, in slouch hat and Aussie uniform doesn’t have to hide his accent. I spied Lieutenant Commander ‘Dopey’ Gibbon, RN (Andrew Faulds), ‘Doc’ Simmonds of the RAMC (Robert Bruce) and I recognised an ‘Airborne’ insignia but, because of the continual snow storm of my borrowed VHS copy, I can’t tell you who he was! Sadly, given my particular interest in air force history, the snow and erratic horizontal hold made it difficult to focus on background detail, so I couldn’t discern any air force officers.

 

 

The plot is simple. A series of escape attempts in an officers’ camp in Northern Italy, just before the Armistice in 1943, which should succeed, are discovered. The first escaper, who disguises himself as the one of the Italian commanders—so cleverly that not even Lieutenant Colonel Huxley (Bernard Lee) the Senior British Officer (SBO) is aware that it is one of his men in disguise—is caught by the very man he is impersonating just as he exits the compound. He is shot in cold blood in front of everyone, creating a near riot. The escape committee is convinced that they have an informer in their midst, until the likely suspect, Lieutenant Cyriakis Coutoules (Cyril Shaps), is found dead in an escape tunnel. Escape plans continue and the Italians continue to discover the attempts. It is not until the night before the grand scheme for the entire camp of 400 men to exit the tunnel in broad daylight is executed that they discover the traitor.

The camp spy pops up often enough in prisoner of war anecdote, but here, as with the similarly themed Stalag 17, the spy/traitor plays a major role in the narrative. The prisoners may dismiss his possible existence with the death of Coutoules, but his identity is revealed to the viewer quite early on. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been; it would have been much better to leave the great reveal until the very end, when Captain ‘Bunter’ Phillips (Richard Attenborough) discovers his identity. Even so, tension is created in not knowing whether the prisoners will discover him or whether their escape attempts will continue to be foiled, with deadly consequences. Although there is a spy in camp, and a murder, escape is at the heart of this film and it forms the basis for both narrative drama and narrative conflict. In one of the earliest scenes, the head of the escape committee, Lieutenant Colonel David Baird (Richard Todd) and Huxley argue over the importance of escape to prisoners of war. Baird is unequivocal in his belief that it was their duty to escape. Huxley is equally adamant that it is also their duty to stay alive. (The irony in Huxley not putting the highest priority on the duty of escape is that he had made a successful escape during the Great War.) This is a standard set piece to reinforce the central place of duty and survival in an active serviceman’s life, whether he is at the front or behind barbed wire.

Every aspect of prisoner-of-war life imaginable has been crammed into the 101 minutes playing time, including the ever-present guards in the watch towers,  and right from the beginning, this film demonstrates that the active serviceman does not languish in captivity but creates as much disruption as possible to the enemy. Not only that, he actively manages his captivity and displays incredible ingenuity. It also highlights the imperative to survive, not only to continue the war whether behind barbed wire or not, but so the men can return home to their families, poignantly illustrated by Bunter Phillips’ wedding band and photos.

The dual goals of escape and survival are not easy to attain because there is indeed, ‘danger within’. Front and centre, is the betrayal of their escape plans by one of their own. Then, there are the cruel murders of the escapers. Lester (Peter Arne), the first to attempt a brazen escape by walking out disguised as the sinister Capitano Benucci (also played by Peter Arne) meets his doppelganger lying in wait, just outside the gates. He shrugs, acknowledging that the game is up, but rather than being rounded up and sent inside as he probably expects, he is shot in cold blood. There are tunnel collapses, real and staged. There is also psychological danger. Capitano Benucci knows full well how much the men depend on their mail to reinforce their connections with home when he announces that much of the mail was destroyed by fire—again. The men take advantage of many coping mechanisms to stay fit and healthy but for the psychologically fragile, mail deprivation is a serious blow.

 

 

As is typical of British films of this era there is a strong thread of humour throughout the film. (Even a cursory look at wartime prisoner of war logbooks reveals that humour was an important coping mechanism in captivity; you can’t be depressed if you are busy laughing at yourself and your situation.) After the opening battle scenes, the camera fixes on a man lying face down, apparently dead. And then he starts scratching his back side. Dopey Gibbon, who sways wildly as he pours ‘vino’ from a teapot, later reveals himself as a competent pre-escape briefer. The SBO sparks a laugh as he offers his gloved hands for finger printing because he likes to keep his hands clean. I couldn’t help smiling at the heart-warming enthusiasm of the ‘sewer rat’, Lieutenant Meynell (Ronnie Stevens) as he talks about his passion for drains, hardly realising that the all-pervading miasma of sewage makes him socially unacceptable—that is, until he discovers an all-important electrical cable. I laughed out loud at the controlled madness of Major Charles Marquand (Michael Wilding) and his side-kick Captain Alfred Piker (Peter Jones) who criticise the typical British weather while stepping out into ‘the rain’, and then announce that they will have to call for a taxi. Reminiscent of Shakespeare’s clowns, those pseudo mad-types serve a double purpose: while providing light relief they also gently hint at one of the greatest fears of all prisoners of war, barbed wire psychosis (wire happy).

I’ve read a few prisoner of war memoirs in my time and have interviewed a number of former prisoners, as well as members of their families. One of the repeated motifs is a great love of and enthusiasm for Red Cross chocolate. It was a treasured commodity and extremely valuable for trade and suborning the guards. Not surprisingly, chocolate puts in an appearance in Danger Within in another deft scene which combines dry British humour, real-life prisoner-of-war experience, and my favourite character in the film, Bunter Phillips. Here, Phillips tucks into his chocolate and refuses to share it around. The selfishness is understandable as, Phillips explains to his friends, he ‘paid through the nose’ for the treat: ‘five cigarettes and a tablet of soap’. The whip-like retort was, ‘you can see you’re out of soap!’ 

 

 

One thing in which I am particularly interested is altruism. I didn’t have far to look in this film to find it. The Italians find ‘evidence’ that Captain Roger Byfold (Donald Houston) murdered Coutoules, the prisoner believed to be the traitor. Given the cold-blooded murder of Lester, it is patently obvious to the prisoners that the innocent Byfold will be tried and executed. The camp clowns, Marquand and Piker, who have a well-advanced escape scheme of their own, offer to take Byfold with them. Their invitation might have been flippantly issued but it was generous, particularly given that a third man lessened their own chances of success. Chocolate-loving Phillips shows that his selfishness is but an aberration as he gives up his tunnel to the greater effort of the mass escape: he places the common good of the camp above his own desire for a quick and easy exit which would maximise his chances of returning to his wife and child. When the mass escape was planned, it was agreed that lots would be drawn to determine the order of exit (reminiscent of the method used to determine the order for the Stalag Luft III’s Great Escape). Altruistic Phillips, however, did not go into that draw. He volunteered to join the rear party, and is one of the last to leave the camp. (A few years later, Attenborough swaps services and gains a promotion as he graduates from family man and altruistic tunneller in Danger Within to Big X, mastermind of the whole shebang, in the 1963 American film, The Great Escape.) Captain Tony Long (William Franklyn) also puts up his hand for the rear party, but his action is hardly altruistic.

The film’s other set piece, again featuring Huxley, demonstrates that altruism does not occur naturally. Despite the wishes of Captain Rupert Callender (Dennis Price), principal of the camp theatre group, the Rupert Callender Players, Huxley decides that an afternoon production of Hamlet will be used as a blind while the prisoners escape via the theatre hut. Callender claims the players are not ready and perhaps resents the fact that his art will not be appreciated by the audience it deserves. Huxley launches into his lecture: ‘What do you think this place is—a holiday camp?’ The words are no accident. Prisoners of war of all stripes in Europe resented the fact that the Red Cross presented images to their family, and the world, that equated their existence to that of a holiday camp. Huxley continues: ‘Now you listen to me Callender. There’s nothing glamourous about being a prisoner of war. Most of the officers here, including me, and you too, are only alive because we surrendered or because someone senior put their hands up for us. Maybe it’s not our fault but it’s nothing to be proud of just the same. Far from it.’ The upshot was that Callender had no choice. He had to perform whether he was ready or not, whether he liked it or not. His players, then, would be some of the last to escape down the tunnel. Callender was not the only one who resented the decision. One of the bridge players, waiting in the theatre wings, muttered that everything was ‘sacrificed to the cause’. Was this a slight dig at the fact that virtually every man in camp was required to play some role in the escape organisation—as did their real life counterparts in Stalag Luft III? Or just a neat reinforcement that altruism in not inherent in all, and altruistic behaviour for the commonweal often has to be forced.

It is clear that this film knows something about life in captivity and, given the personal wartime experiences of Michael Gilbert and Colin Lesslie, this is not surprising. Examples of ‘real’ prisoner of war experience are crammed in everywhere, as significant plot devices, to provide ‘colour’, and as realistic diversions to escape activity. The escape organisation’s security crew are on the alert shortly after the opening sequence. The watcher settles into his deckchair by the Rugger field, ostensibly reading his never-ending book as he nods the ‘all clear’, the mirror signal is flashed, the clean towel is flashed to signal that the escape work can get underway. (The look-outs are on duty right through the film.) The ‘keep fit-types’ play rugger and golf and keep trim doing PT. There are the gardeners and the circuit walkers. In one scene the artist paints the ever-present guard tower, in another the art class provides a plausible excuse for a pre-escape briefing session. The bridge players play continuously, and later reveal a half regret that they would soon be leaving the ‘security’ of captivity for an uncertain future as escapees and evaders when they remark that this would be their last game behind barbed wire. There’s even the camp pet, a potential table duck who receives a reprieve, ostensibly until Christmas.

Perhaps the most striking example of the legacy of personal experience in the form of significant plot device comes from the discovery Phillips makes after a sand fall in the tunnel where he is completely buried for a time. He couldn’t move his hands at all, and, as such, realised that Coutoules’ damaged hands had occurred not because he had tried to dig his way out of the sand fall but because he had been tortured before death.

I am often bowled over by the examples of ‘kriegie ingenuity’ that abounded in Stalag Luft III. Every aspect of Stalag Luft III’s Great Escape, for instance, highlights the prisoners’ prodigious creative and technical talents. Likewise, in Danger Within, and perhaps the most ingenious is the ‘applause machine’ which audibly disguises the theatre left empty as the prisoners made their exit en masse from the camp. Ingenuity provides an important Deus ex Machina solution. How can they move Coutoules’ dead body right under the noses of the Italians? Round up the keep fit-types, of course. They can display their manly physiques and athletic prowess despite months or years of captivity and, with a ruse of playing piggy-back, can easily whisk the body to a more innocuous place where it can be ‘officially’ discovered.  

There were two small aspects which I found particularly interesting. Indeed, I wondered if they had been drawn from the experiences of the men of Stalag Luft III and their mass escape, given details of if were well and truly in the public domain before either Michael Gilbert penned his 1952 novel or this film went into production, thanks to Paul Brickhill’s post war articles, Escape to Danger, which he penned with Conrad Norton in 1946 and The Great Escape which was published in 1950. Here in Italy, on the night before the escape, the men’s kit was to be inspected because, as the escape committee correctly assumes, there would be someone wanting to take along the kitchen sink, a poignant reminder perhaps that delays occurred in Stalag Luft III’s escape because luggage-laden men got stuck in the tunnel as they trolleyed down. (As it happened, the kitchen sink stayed behind in this effort, but the pet duck’s Christmas reprieve was extended indefinitely when its carer smuggled it out in his battle dress jacket.) The other thing that piqued my interest was that the committee monitored the letters going out before the escape. They wanted to prevent a deluge of ‘last letters’ tipping off the Italians. I haven’t pursued whether or not this occurred in Stalag Luft III, but I was surprised when I recently went through the letters of one Australian who was killed in the Great Escape and noted that the final letter his family received was written a few weeks before he exited camp, rather than in the days before, as I would have expected.

Letters in Danger Within have a dual function. They provide the means by which the traitor communicates his knowledge to Capitano Benucci, but they also signify the link to home and family. The prisoners might not talk about them in this film but family—and in particular wives—are revealed as very much a part of the captivity experience when we catch a glimpse of them in Phillips’ photos and the wedding band he always wears, even when digging. Women, always absent yet ever present in any prisoner-of-war camp, crop up frequently—and often humorously—in different guises, underscoring their significance to prisoners cut off from them physically while trapped in their homosocial environment. We catch a glimpse of tragic Ophelia, as the theatre-types rehearse, Gibbon jokes about old masters and old mistresses, in his pseudo art class, and, while packing his kit before departure, one man wonders if he can take along his photo of a shapely woman. His companion asks for her measurements and announces on hearing them that, at 41, 23, 38 inches, his friend ‘would never get her through the tunnel!’

Women, for prisoners of war, represent the past and the future. For the main part, it is too hard to dwell on either: you can’t relive the past and you can’t access the future until you are released. Even so, real life prisoners of war constantly dreamt of and planned for the future. They took courses, planned their future careers, gambled on when the war would end (usually before next Christmas) and some even designed the homes they would build and live in. In Danger Within, there is almost no reference to a future beyond barbed wire until the final preparations for the escape: ‘This time tomorrow we’ll all be outside’.

While Danger Within very much falls within the prisoner-of-war genre, the spy subplot has a satisfying resolution with the traitor receiving his just deserts. And I am not talking about a piece of Phillips’ chocolate. I won’t tell you how justice is served but, despite being accidental and administered by his ally Capitano Benucci, it reflects the real life punishment meted out to those who betray their countries in wartime. The finale, however, does not reflect the reality experienced by mass escapers. Here, the 400 do get out, and are last seen tearing through the Italian terrain to freedom. Real life mass escapes, however, failed dismally. But this is fiction, and the viewer is entitled to imagine a happy ending. (About 20,000 allied prisoners of war simply walked out of Italian camps after the armistice. Over 5000 traversed the Alps to neutral Switzerland, including 420 Australians. 

  (http://www.anzacpow.com/part_2__escape_from_italian_camps/chapter_1__the_italian_armistice) Some joined guerrilla groups. The majority were rounded up and sent to German prisoner of war camps, including 29 or so Australian airmen who found themselves in Stalag Luft III.) So, suspending any sense of reality, I am more than content to believe that Bunter Phillips will return to his family and, notwithstanding the fact that chocolate is rationed, will have as much as he wants, without having to sacrifice hygiene!

How then, did Danger Within present captivity and the POW protagonists to the moving loving public, 14 years after war’s end? Well, despite Huxley’s declaration, this particular camp did come across as a holiday camp, what with sport, theatre, endless bridge playing and vino on tap, or in tea pot. The prisoners were fit and healthy and had obviously not suffered from any rationing of food and vitamins, as evidenced by the PT boys and the energetic rugger aficionados. They obviously had a decent laundry service because all uniforms appeared neatly ironed and stain free. Indeed, there was no sign of any mismatched, pieced together ensemble. The active serviceman was always on the go, planning and executing escapes, creating diversions, and getting up the nose of their captors. Although there was ‘danger within’, it did look like a jolly-hockey-sticks existence, greatly at odds with the starker images and physical debilitation of the Japanese prisoner-of-war experience portrayed two years earlier in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Viewing Danger Within, I can well see how many at the time (and later) believed that prisoners of war in Europe had had a fairly decent time of it in captivity, and that any similar camp would have been considered a soft billet where everyone had been busily trying to escape.

 

 

(All images, except for the modern book cover, lifted from ‘the internet’.)

Andy Wright of Aircrew Book Review http://aircrewbookreview.blogspot.com.au/ is passionate about Second World War aviation and I consider myself fortunate that he deemed my first four books worthy of review. He has little interest in non-military aviation and so I did not think for a second that he would bother to even read Taking Flight. Not only did he read it, but he has put together a glowing review which takes into account both the book but also Lores Bonney's unrecognised (for so long) place in aviation.

 

In reviewing Taking Flight, Andy has the unequalled record of having reviewed ALL of my books. I am honoured. Here is the link to the review http://aircrewbookreview.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/taking-flight-kristen-alexander.html 

Aviation today doesn’t often make the headlines unless it’s bad news. Aircraft cross six of the seven continents hourly and usually do so to reach another continent on the other side of a vast ocean. Long distance flying is accepted if you want to see the world yet pilots of all ages still accept the challenge to tackle a route solo. Some do it in modern aircraft, some do it in vintage aircraft with or without a support crew. These flights remain remarkable achievements. If anything, today’s political and security landscape makes long-distance solo flights harder to plan let alone fly. This is especially so when trying to follow the flight path of a pioneer. Destinations have to be carefully picked and diversions assessed for their suitability and safety. Really, not a lot has changed since the early days of aviation. It is still an amazing effort to fly solo around Australia or fly to England in a Tiger Moth but, because of the airliners passing thousands of feet overhead, the mainstream don’t get it. It’s all been done before.

That’s the key point. Being the first to do something can’t be taken away. With the birth of aviation, everything was a challenge. That said, it still took something incredible to be lauded as a pioneer. There are two types of pioneer aviator. Those in the first group remain household names to some extent: Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Jean Batten, Charles Kingsford Smith, Bert Hinkler, Charles Lindbergh, Wiley Post, Alcock and Brown etc. They have been extensively memorialised, their aircraft, or replicas thereof, reside in museums or attend airshows, books are still written about them and their likeness appears on currency. Then there’s the second lot. The unknowns. Those who have achieved just as much, perhaps more, but have been almost lost to history. Were they the less attention seeking perhaps? They might be remembered on a plaque somewhere or have had a book published, or written about them, that remains long out of print. To me, someone who inhabits the world of historic aviation, but who regularly wears blinkers out of necessity, Lores Bonney is one of the forgotten.

Well, with a bit of luck, and a good book, perhaps this will no longer be the case. One of Australia’s leading aviation biographers, Kristen Alexander, was asked by the National Library of Australia to write Bonney’s story using the library’s Lores Bonney Collection as the core. This collection, among various personal items, includes Bonney’s letters and diaries. Why is she significant? In a time when female pilots were regarded as somewhat of a novelty, Lores was determined to fly and, once she had achieved some semblance of proficiency, immediately started planning long distance flights. She first set a record for the longest one-day flight in Australia (more than 1,500 kilometres) and her second was a mere solo jaunt around the country. She was the first woman to achieve this. Mother England beckoned, as was its wont, so Lores set out to become the first aviatrix to fly there from Australia. Her trusty DH.60 Moth ‘My Little Ship’ was her companion on these first adventures and Lores, being the confident and driven type she was, trained as a mechanic and fitter so she was capable of maintaining the aircraft and effecting repairs. Husband Harry backed her flying financially but was always reluctant to let her go (although he did propose an idea that became her longest flight).

While she is credited with that first flight to England, a prang while landing to avoid weather in Burma’s very southern regions, led to Lores disassembling the Moth on the beach and having it transported, by barge and ship, to Rangoon and Calcutta respectively. It was a journey of more than 1,800 kilometres. Her timetable flew out the window as did her ability to get through the rest of the flight ahead of the known worsening weather en route. In typical Lores fashion, however, despite moments of self-doubt and frustration, she battled through and made it. It was 1933 and something no other woman had done before.

Lores followed the England flight up by becoming the first person to fly to South Africa, her country of birth, from Australia. This time she did it in a Klemm and the relative comfort of an enclosed cockpit. The destination was an inspired choice as, even by 1937, there were few aviation firsts to be conquered. The Klemm was falling apart and once again the weather played a big part in delays. Add in a little dysentery in India (and other health issues on the way) and bureaucratic bungling, and she didn’t arrive in the Union until mid-August, having left in April. What would be her final major achievement had been completed before her fortieth birthday.

Her plans for further adventures were scotched by, first, the loss of the Klemm, now fully rebuilt, in a hangar fire and, second, the outbreak of the Second World War. She continued to fly, but eventually gave it up in her early fifties, and kept travelling overseas exploring the world before her death in 1994.

To be honest, it is quite likely I would not have read this book if it were not for the author’s name on the front. It is outside what I like to think I specialise in (those blinkers again). That makes me a bit of an idiot as Lores Bonney was an unstoppable, albeit shy to a fault when out of the public eye, force of nature, her diminutive size belying an incredible fortitude that even managed to overcome her crises of confidence. With the resources available, I cannot think of a better author to tackle a new book (there is another, much older biography) on this pioneering aviatrix. The Alexander factor, as I like to call it, of teasing out personal minutiae, of tying together an inordinate number of threads, to sculpt an almost tangible image of a flyer long gone, is in full song here. Indeed, given it is a return to the individual biography for this author, after several years working on a collection of personalities, the Bonney work has captured a biographer at the top of her game. Having stepped away from wartime aviation and embracing the finicky, almost artisan, world of pre-war civil aviation, Kristen has got inside Lores’ persona and produced an insightful and revealing book.

A large format softcover of more than 270 pages, the endpapers include a very useful map of Lores’ travels in the Moth and the Klemm. The photos, at least one per two page spread, are reproduced well with the left-hand page being dedicated to either a full page photo (usually of Lores) or a smaller image accompanied by a detailed caption. Many of the better photos of Lores are well-selected, and enlarged, and often speak volumes particularly those featuring the aviatrix elbow deep in an engine or at large in one of her many destinations. The narrative, therefore, is limited to the right-hand pages and effortlessly combines excerpts from letters and diaries with details of Lores’ preparations, innermost thoughts, flying, failures, successes and adventures. It is an incredibly easy read and those personal photos of Lores really make an impression.

Will Lores Bonney’s history-making life emerge from the wilderness and into the mainstream because of this book? Probably not. Aviation enthusiasts will appreciate it and her name and achievements will continue to pop up because they will always maintain their sense of awe. She flew in the time of Johnson, Batten and Earhart, to name the obvious ones, two of whom were published authors, and remains overshadowed by these contemporaries. If, somehow, Lores Bonney does enter the public interest, it will be because of Taking Flight and, who knows, perhaps this book will be the genesis for the release of Bonney’s two unpublished (due to rejection!) manuscripts. Now that would be good news.

Anzac Day 1944 in Stalag Luft III

Anzac Day 1944 in SLIII

At 2.30 am on 25 April 1944, Minnie Archer and her daughter, Mavis, walked from Sydney’s Brighton Le Sands to Rockdale, where they caught a special train to Martin Place. Mrs Archer thought that only 3 or 400 would make the effort to attend the Dawn Service but ‘I got a shock when I saw so many people there. … Martin Place was crowded. 20,000.’ As well as honouring the war dead, it is likely that Mrs Archer would have prayed for the safe-keeping of her son, George, who had been a prisoner of war since July 1942. Apart from a 6 month stint in Oflag XXIB, he had spent all of his captivity in Stalag Luft III’s East Compound. ‘The service was beautiful’, she wrote in an airgraph to George a few days later. (He didn’t receive it until September.) ‘I was glad I went’.

Later that morning, during the Solemn Requiem Mass held at St Mary’s Cathedral on 25 April 1944, Father O’ Brien told the congregation that ‘Today Australia is deep in thought as well as in sorrow for the 70,000 men dead, prisoners of war, missing and wounded.’ If some of those prisoners were also deep in thought, they weren’t letting on. They were making the most of the day.

In Stalag Luft III’s East Compound, a church service was held in the theatre by Padre Thompson, a British Methodist padre who had been captured in North Africa. Almost certainly, George Archer was present at this service as he was one of the Camp Church stewards. Afterwards, the Australians and New Zealanders staged a sporting carnival which included basketball, soccer and golf. The prisoners of war may have been denied many liberties during their incarceration but the Australian sports lovers were better off than their home front compatriots: in early April, Prime Minister Curtin had announced in early April that organised sports meetings were prohibited on Anzac Day. Gerald Carroll, an army orderly was proudly nationalist and noted when the Australians beat their New Zealand opponents.

 

The Australians in North Compound also mixed faith and sport. There, Padre Walton—‘a Church Army type from NZ’, as Harry ‘Gobi’ Train recalled him—conducted a service for the Australians and New Zealanders. After that, Hauptmann Hans Pieber took some group photos. As well as gathering for the North Compound photo, the Australians divided into state groups, including the West Australians and New South Welshmen. For one New South Welshman, the day meant more than sport, community and commemoration: this was also Ronald Bowen Anzac Pender’s 29th birthday (and his second in captivity). He had been born on the very first Anzac Day.

Copies of Pieber’s photos appear in a number of books and the collections of many of the North Compound Australians such as Laurie Simpson, Ken Carson, Ronald Baines, Len Netherway, and Torres Ferres.

 

The ranks of those gathering for the group portraits were depleted by the five Australians who had recently been killed in what would later be called the Great Escape: James Catanach, John Williams, Tom Leigh (whose Australian connection would not be recognised for many years afterwards), Reginald Kierath and Albert Hake.

Their deaths were felt by all their fellow prisoners of North Compound, but their Australian friends in East Compound too felt the shock of their loss. On 8 May, George Archer sat down to write his monthly letter to his mother Minnie, his father, and the ‘rest of [the] gang’. Tumbled in among a catalogue of letters and parcels received, instructions to the family to send more parcels to his English friends, details of the basketball games he enjoyed playing in order to keep fit, and greetings passed on to friends from another prisoner, was an oblique reference to the deaths of two of the Australian Great Escapers: ‘Bill Catanach and Allan Hake met with an accident and were buried last March’.

It is not likely that someone who had worn a black armband to commemorate the deaths of fellow Australians, with whom he had shared a compound (they had been in East Compound with George when they first arrived at Stalag Luft III) would forget their names. George’s letters home had been censored in the past and so it seems he deliberately obscured the names to ensure the news slipped past the censors.

It would be a few months before Minnie Archer received this sad news, well after the kin of the Escapers had been notified.

 

In due course, their names were added to Australian casualty lists and, on 17 May 1944, Albert Hake’s wife received the telegram advising that her husband had lost his life on 25 March 1944—one month before his former friends gathered to remember all war dead—‘while attempting to escape from confinement of a prisoner of war’.

 

Noela Hake spent a life time remembering her young husband and her extended family also remembered Albert. A proud moment was when his great nephew and great niece honoured him on Anzac Day 1997.