Castle of the Eagles

Escape from Mussolini's Colditz

Mark Felton

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781785781186
• eBook ISBN: 9781785781193
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Italian History
• Index: History

'Keeps up the suspense to the end.' The Times Literary Supplement
'An extraordinary, and largely forgotten wartime story -- brought back to life in this Boys' Own account.' The Daily Mail
High in the Tuscan hills above Florence, an elaborate medieval castle, converted to a POW camp on Mussolini's personal orders, holds one of the most illustrious groups of prisoners in the history of warfare.
The dozen or so British and Commonwealth senior officers includes three knights of the realm and two VCs. The youngest of them is 48, the oldest 63. One is missing a hand and an eye. Another suffers with a gammy hip. Against insuperable odds, these extraordinary middle-aged POWs plan a series of daring escape attempts, culminating in a complex tunnel deep beneath the castle.
One rainswept night in March 1943, six men will burst from the earth beyond the castle's curtain wall and slip away. By assorted means, the three Brits, two New Zealanders and a half-Belgian aristocrat will attempt to make it to neutral Switzerland, over 200 miles away.

CHAPTER 1

___________________

The Prize Prisoner

‘After nine months as a member of his staff, when we left England I admired and respected Air Marshal Boyd. After two and a half years of prison life with him, living in the same house, often in the same room, I admired and respected him a hundred times more. I knew him then to be a great and simple man.’

Flight Lieutenant John Leeming

John Leeming cursed loudly as his shoulder connected painfully with one of the Wellington bomber’s internal struts, his stomach lurching as the stricken plane pitched and rolled alarmingly through the air as it headed for the earth. The wind screamed like a typhoon through a large and jagged hole in the Wellington’s floor, one of several caused by cannon shells from the swarm of Italian fighters that had suddenly pounced on them without warning.¹ Leeming kicked at a heavy grey steel strongbox with one of his long legs, edging it towards the lip of the hole until, with a final push of his boot, the box flew out of the aircraft, plummeting towards the Mediterranean far below. One more box remained, and Leeming, dressed in his blue RAF officer’s uniform with pilot’s wings above the left breast pocket, his legs aching from his awkward position on the plane’s floor, began to kick at it wildly until it followed the other boxes out through the hole. Then Leeming lay on the floor for a few seconds, listening to the roar of the dying engines as the wind blew everything that wasn’t secured around the Wellington’s interior like a mini tornado. I’ve just thrown away £250,000, thought Leeming, shaking his head in silent disbelief. ‘A quarter of a million of pounds sent to the bottom of the sea!’ he muttered aloud. In Leeming’s opinion, the war had suddenly taken a dramatically strange turn for the worse.

‘Brace for impact!’ came Squadron Leader Norman Samuels’ frantic yell from the cockpit. ‘She’s going in hard!’ Leeming was instantly jerked out of his private reverie, rolling on to his stomach and grabbing hold of anything solid-looking that would support him. He glanced behind him and saw his boss, Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd, ‘a short, broad-chested, and powerfully built’² man with short greying hair and a neat moustache, doing likewise, his normally genial face set with a determined grimace. Boyd caught his eye and mouthed something, but Leeming couldn’t hear what it was above the racket of the whining, guttering engines and the ceaseless wind. Leeming glanced back at the hole through which he had just deposited the cash boxes. The azure of the sea had been replaced by green rolling hills and fields. ‘Sicily,’ muttered Leeming to himself. The Wellington was now very low. Leeming closed his eyes and awaited the end.

*

A strange quietness followed the terrific violence of the crash landing. Leeming lay on his side in the broken fuselage, his hands still grimly gripping a spar. The air was dusty and there was a ticking noise coming from one of the engines as it cooled. Then Air Marshal Boyd, Leeming and the four crewmen began to stir, groaning and occasionally crying out in pain from their injuries. Leeming dragged himself out of the fuselage with the others. His arm hurt like hell.

Once outside, Leeming surveyed the Wellington. The plane was a complete wreck: one of its huge wings had broken off, its nose was smashed in, and the big propeller blades had been bent back on themselves by the force of the impact. For several hundred feet behind the Wellington the Sicilian landscape had been gouged and churned up by the crash landing. Leeming narrowed his eyes against the glare of the sun, which was warm on his smoke-blackened face. Boyd slowly stood and walked, slightly unsteadily, around to the cockpit where he began fumbling in his pockets, pulling out some papers and his cigarette lighter. Leeming soon realised that the Air Marshal was trying to set fire to the plane. It was a vital task, considering what Boyd had been carrying aboard among his personal kit. His private papers would comprise an intelligence treasure trove if they were to fall into the hands of the enemy. They, along with the plane, had to be thoroughly destroyed before the Italians arrived to investigate and take the Britons prisoner.

Leeming reflected on the journey that had landed him unexpectedly in the hands of the enemy. They had taken off from RAF Stradishall near Haverhill in Suffolk on 19 November 1940 bound for Cairo via the airfield at Luqa in Malta. Once in Egypt, the 51-year-old Boyd was to assume deputy command of Allied air forces under Air Chief Marshal Longmore.³ The appointment of the energetic Boyd to the Middle East came at a time when Britain was struggling to maintain its position in Egypt against a huge Italian assault.

Benito Mussolini had entered Italy into the war on Germany’s side in late June 1940, after witnessing Hitler’s triumphs in Poland and against the Western Allies in France and the Low Countries. Il Duce undoubtedly thought that Italy might be able to snatch a few of the victory laurels for herself on the back of Germany’s defeat of France and the ejection of the British from the Continent. But the Italian entry into the war was particularly worrisome for Britain in the Mediterranean, a traditional bastion of British power. The large and powerful Italian fleet and the massive Italian army in Libya posed serious threats to the British Empire’s lifeline, the Suez Canal, as well as to British bases at Malta and Gibraltar. Already seriously run-down as the best equipment was siphoned off for the defence of Britain against a possible German invasion, the small British garrison in Egypt was vulnerable and difficult to supply. Mussolini had ordered the invasion of Egypt in early August 1940, and by 16 September the Italian 10th Army had occupied and dug in around the Egyptian town of Sidi Barrani. Outnumbered ten to one, the small British force under General Sir Claude Auchinleck had begun planning for Operation Compass, a series of large-scale raids against the Italian fortresses that would be led by a plucky and aggressive general named Richard O’Connor. Owen Boyd was being sent to Egypt to attempt to revitalise and reorganise the RAF’s response to the Italian threat. Boyd seemed the ideal choice – a pugnacious First World War decorated flyer whose last post had been leading RAF Balloon Command, providing vital barrage balloon cover for Britain’s cities.

But now, eleven hours after leaving England, Air Marshal Boyd’s plane was a battered wreck lying in a Sicilian field. After they had dodged German flak near Paris, Wellington T-2873 from 214 Middle East Flight had headed out over a wet and stormy Mediterranean towards Egypt, with a scheduled refuelling stop at Malta.⁴ But an apparent navigational error and consequent fuel shortage had brought the Wellington too close to the island of Sicily where it was immediately pounced upon by alert Italian fighters and forced down.⁵ Questions would be asked as to why Boyd’s plane had been sent unescorted to the Middle East by such an obviously dangerous route, especially as he was one of the few senior officers that were privy to the secrets of Bletchley Park and the ‘Ultra’ intelligence emanating from cracking the German Enigma code.⁶ It was for this reason that Boyd, still shaken up from the crash landing, struggled to burn the aircraft and his private papers that had been carried aboard.

The boxes full of banknotes that Leeming had kicked overboard into the sea had been loaded under guard in England. They had been destined for the British headquarters in Cairo as well, vital operating funds for various hush-hush sections that conducted ‘butcher and bolt’ operations behind enemy lines. Once the Wellington had been hit, Boyd had pointed at the small pile of grey boxes and yelled at Leeming: ‘Get rid of it, John! We’re going down in enemy territory!’⁷ Shortly afterwards Leeming, his heart heavy at the sacrifice, had kicked out the quarter of a million pounds, ironically enough money in 1940 to buy a replacement Wellington three-and-a-half times over.⁸

It had only been because of the direct intervention of Prime Minister Winston Churchill that Boyd had been on the plane. Air Chief Marshal Longmore had requested a different officer be appointed his deputy, Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Tedder, but the Prime Minister had rejected Tedder and approved Boyd’s promotion instead.⁹ With Boyd having been taken prisoner, Tedder would now assume Boyd’s post anyway.

*

Boyd looked up from his frantic job of setting fire to the front of the plane and spotted movement. A motley collection of Sicilian peasants, dressed in their traditionally colourful open-necked shirts, broad waist sashes and trousers worn with puttees up to their knees, were gingerly approaching the crash scene, armed with wood axes. They had been cutting down trees near the village of Comiso. ‘Stop them, John,’ shouted Boyd at Leeming. Leeming turned and stared at the peasants. With their axes slung over their shoulders, moustachioed faces and old-fashioned clothes, they looked like the kinds of rogues who had been at Blackbeard’s side. Leeming swallowed hard and stood rooted to the spot. Boyd’s booming and irritated voice repeated his order. Is this how it ends for me, thought Leeming gloomily, I survive a plane crash only to be murdered by Sicilian cut-throats?

Focusing his mind, Leeming followed his friend’s order and began walking towards the Sicilian peasants. He touched the .38 calibre Webley revolver that he wore in a holster around his waist, but then thought better of it. He didn’t relish waving a gun in the face of these well-armed locals, particularly a gun that only held six shots when there were fifteen armed Sicilians. Instead, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a battered packet of Woodbines and a stub of pencil and started to draw a Union Jack.¹⁰ Holding up his artwork before the Sicilians, he noticed how the sun glinted off the sharp axe blades that were slung over their shoulders. The peasants soon gathered around him in an excited, chattering mass as they debated loudly what to do.¹¹ Suddenly, over Leeming’s shoulder the cockpit of the shattered Wellington burst into flames with a loud ‘whoomph’, startling the Sicilians who began running around, yelling and shrieking excitedly. They were clearly worried about explosions, probably thinking that the Wellington was equipped with a full bomb load. Leeming took the opportunity to retreat to where Boyd, Squadron Leader Samuels, Flight Lieutenant Payn, Pilot Officer Watson and Sergeant Wynn had gathered near the aircraft’s tail.¹² Thick black smoke poured from the front of the plane, blotting out the harsh sun, as the flames devoured the Wellington’s interior. Boyd smiled at his handiwork.

Leeming, determined to salvage his personal kit before the rest of the plane was engulfed, climbed back inside the fuselage. Grabbing the kit, he was suddenly lifted out of the aircraft as if thrown by a huge hand, landing in a winded pile on the grass. Squadron Leader Samuels had managed to arm a special explosive device designed to destroy the plane’s sensitive equipment shortly before they had crashed, and this had detonated just as Leeming grabbed his kit. Leeming had had enough. He lay on his back on the grass attempting to recover his composure, the pain in his arm bothering him, listening to Boyd attempting to coax the Sicilians back over in a loud, impatient voice, telling them in English that there were no bombs on board. His efforts were suddenly undermined when the flames reached the oxygen cylinders carried aboard the Wellington, which promptly exploded, spraying shrapnel through the air. Leeming, Boyd and the others jumped to their feet and ran after the Sicilians, anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the rapidly disintegrating plane.¹³

*

It had already been a long road for Leeming, at 45 years old one of the oldest Flight Lieutenants in the RAF. Born in Chorlton, Lancashire in 1895, Leeming had demonstrated an early talent for writing, publishing his first article at the age of thirteen. He was later to write many bestselling books, some indulging his fascination with aviation. While at school he witnessed some of the early efforts at powered flight and quickly became hooked. In 1910, aged fifteen, Leeming had built his first glider, and he continued to build and fly gliders throughout the 1920s. Moving on to powered aircraft, Leeming had achieved lasting fame in 1928 when he and Avro’s chief test pilot Bert Hinkler became the first people to land an aircraft on a mountain in Britain. They selected 3,117-foot-high Helvellyn in the Lake District for their stunt, managing to set down and take off again in an Avro 585 biplane. Leeming had founded Northern Air Lines in 1928, and he was instrumental in finding a new airport site for Manchester at Ringway.

In the early 1930s Leeming had branched out into horticulture, building a stunning garden at Bowden, writing bestselling gardening books and creating the character ‘Claudius the Bee’ for the Manchester Evening News. Walt Disney bought the film rights. With the onset of war in 1939 Leeming had been commissioned into the RAF and appointed as aide-de-camp to Air Marshal Boyd. Though separated by a considerable difference in rank, Leeming at 45 and Boyd at 51 were close in age and united by their fascination with flying, going back to childhood for both men. They were to become close friends and comrades during the coming years of adversity.

*

‘You know,’ declared Air Marshal Boyd to Leeming, Samuels and the other RAF crewmen who were sitting inside a tiny house before a large audience of excited villagers, ‘all this is highly irregular.’¹⁴ Boyd, who was seated on the only chair inside the hovel, was referring to the fact that the Sicilian peasants had yet to disarm them. The Air Marshal was a stickler for the rules and regulations, and dealing with civilians, particularly foreign civilians, was wearing what remained of his patience thinner. Each Briton still wore his service revolver on a webbing gun belt around his waist. Boyd, noted Leeming, sat in the centre of the room ‘like some medieval monarch holding Court, we grouped like courtiers around him, the crowd of chattering villagers facing us.’¹⁵ Boyd, stern-faced and clearly not impressed by the situation, decided upon a ‘proper’ gesture. It was inconceivable that no one had yet demanded that they surrender. ‘We’d better hand over our revolvers,’ he stated, resolutely making up his mind.

Boyd slowly rose from his chair and reached into his holster, pulling out his pistol, Leeming and the Wellington’s crew following suit. But if Boyd had expected a formal surrender ceremony he was soon disabused of the notion as a peasant instantly snatched the proffered sidearm from Boyd’s outstretched hand, while other Sicilians crowded forward in a noisy tumult. The British revolver was worth a considerable sum of money to the impoverished locals, who soon descended into a pushing and shoving mob who competed loudly and increasingly violently for ownership.

Boyd, not content to see his surrender gesture reduced to a farce, acted swiftly to restore order. He suddenly launched himself into the crowd, his squat, broad-shouldered frame bulling through the riotous locals and roaring at the peasant who had taken his pistol: ‘Give it to me!’ Though the Air Marshal was rather diminutive, the peasants reacted to Boyd’s force of personality, drawing back from the red-faced and shouting foreigner in fear. It was a magnificent display of sheer bravado on Boyd’s part, but entirely in keeping with his strong character. ‘Give me that!’ shouted Boyd, snatching the pistol from the peasant who’d originally pinched it. He broke it open and emptied the shells into his other hand before snapping the pistol shut and handing it back. ‘Now you’ll be safe,’ Boyd explained to the confused peasant, enunciating each word in the loud manner many English use when addressing foreigners. ‘Silly devils! You might have shot yourselves!’¹⁶

Shortly afterwards a unit from the Royal Italian Navy arrived from a nearby...

Table of contents

• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• A Note on the Text
• Prologue
• Chapter 1. The Prize Prisoner
• Chapter 2. A Gift of Goggles
• Chapter 3. Mazawattee’s Mad House
• Chapter 4. Men of Honour
• Chapter 5. Advance Party
• Chapter 6. The Travelling Menagerie
• Chapter 7. The Eagles’ Nest
• Chapter 8. Trial and Error
• Chapter 9. Going Underground
• Chapter 10. Six Seconds
• Chapter 11. The Ghost Goes West
• Chapter 12. Under the Dome
• Chapter 13. Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow
• Chapter 14. The Pilgrim Band
• Chapter 15. Elevenses
• Chapter 16. Boy Scouting
• Chapter 17. Mickey Blows the Gaff
• Chapter 18. Night Crossing
• Epilogue
• Colour Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Backinner
• Back Cover