The Madness of Courage

The Exceptional Achievements of Gilbert Insall

Tony Insall

• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785909597
• Index: History

Group Captain Gilbert Insall holds a unique record: he is the only person to have both won a Victoria Cross and escaped successfully from a German prisoner of war camp during the First World War. The Madness of Courage describes how, when forced down by engine damage after destroying a German fighter, Gilbert ignored intensive shelling in order to repair his aircraft and return to base. But a few weeks later, he was shot down and captured. And thus began a distinguished career in prison breaking. He tunnelled out of Heidelberg prison camp and later hid among boxes on a horse-drawn cart to get away from Crefeld, each time being recaptured. Then, in Ströhen, Gilbert and several companions concealed themselves in a claustrophobically small space they had excavated under the floor of the bathhouse. They remained there for seventeen hours, while a fruitless search for them was carried out, and eventually emerged and successfully reached Holland. Meticulously told by Gilbert's great-nephew, the critically acclaimed intelligence historian Tony Insall, The Madness of Courage is a gripping true story about a remarkable man at a time before the Geneva Convention was signed, when conditions for prisoners of war were often appalling and the British War Office did little to help prisoners escape. Instead, Gilbert's family, assisted by French intelligence, gave him the support he needed to break out of captivity in an extraordinary feat of bravery, resilience and ingenuity.

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Map of Germany in 1914
• Foreword by Air Marshal Sir Christopher Harper KBE
• Chapter 1: A mad old bugger
• Chapter 2: Taking to the skies
• Chapter 3: Early days on the French front
• Chapter 4: Winning a VC, capture – and interrogation
• Chapter 5: Death – and life – in prison camps
• Chapter 6: Getting out – and getting home
• Chapter 7: Tunnelling out of Heidelberg
• Chapter 8: Solitary confinement and a brief escape from Crefeld
• Chapter 9: What did intelligence services do to help escapers?
• Chapter 10: Success at last!
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright