ARTICLE: A Determined Bid for Freedom, 1941-43

For today, you have George Brown to thank for a stellar bit of rabbit-holing. Back before I was born, he decided to sit down and try to catalogue all of the men who escaped the clutches of the enemy successfully during the Second World War, and then he typed the accounts up and had them bound.

Yesterday, when I was giving a talk to a brilliant little audience at the Petersfield Bookshop, I found a copy, and put it on a pile of shame to be purchased. At the end of the night, they gave me my swag bag as a thank you for the talk, and so the first thing I’ve done is open up Brown’s diligent piece of work and found a story for you. So thank you George, and also thank you John and Robert for the book.

I’ll start with Brown’s explanation of what he was doing:

When a member of the armed forces is captured by an enemy in time of war, it is his personal duty to escape.

International law compels him to give the enemy no information other than his name, rank and number; but when he has complied, the war for him has not ended. It begins all over again; to be fought under a new set of rules, in a new set of circumstances, and above all, without the comforting assistance of weapons.

The captor has the guns, mines, searchlights, spies, traps, barbed wire, dogs; and all the countless refinements of mental oppression that makes life in prison compounds a special sort of hell. Against all these things, the captive has only his great courage, wit, resourcefulness, initiative, determination, and luck (if fate allows him any) ; and perhaps most important of all, his mental attitude.

The quintessence of courage is possessed by an escaper who has power within himself to contemplate, select, prepare for, and execute a plan that he knows beforehand must make him a target for death.

The escaper risks torture and death for the opportunity of freedom.

Escaping was not the affair of a few individuals, but a highly organized network which was sustained right up to the end of the war. Of the approximate 5,000 men who were successful in escaping and making their way back to England, only about ten percent were awarded with a gallantry award.

Every effort has been made to locate those so rewarded.

In cases where the recommendation for an award has been avail-able, this has been used, rather than the actual London Gazette citation, as the recommendation is much more descriptive. In some instances where the actual account of escape has been available, this has been used. In these cases, it is the debriefing of the escape given by M.I. 5 on the escaper's return.

I hope that this publication will assist other collectors in the field of militaria. For any errors and omissions, I sincerely ask the indulgence of my readers. Critiques of new information is always welcome.

And now, here is the account of one Cyril Bruce Flockhart MC, a Warrant Officer with 76 Squadron, RAF…

(www.aviastar.org)

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I was a member of the crew of a Halifax Mark 1 aircraft which took off from Middleton St. George about 2145 hrs. on the 4th of August 1941.

We reached approximately the target area - Karlsruhe - and bombed the larger of two fires, possibly at Mannheim. We were coned badly and shot up by flak, one half of the tail unit being destroyed. Sgt. Byrne put the aircraft into a steep dive and gave the order to bale out about 0200 hours (August 5). I baled at 500 or 600 ft. and was only in the air for about two seconds. The aircraft went on, and I learned later that Sgt. Byrne had flown it alone as far as the Belgian Coast, where he had been shot down by a fighter.

I reached the ground on a new road between Worms (Germany) and Lampertheim. I sprained my knee in touching down. Two searchlights were operating along the ground near me. I lay still for a few minutes and then gathered in my parachute, took off my harness, and hid both in a ditch.

The fire at Mannheim was pretty big and I decided it would be advisable to make in that direction and that it would be better to head for France. I was on the eastern bank of the Rhine, and as I did not feel able to swim the river, I walked north in search of a bridge.