This past spring, I watched the movie “Operation Mincemeat.” It was based on Ben Macintyre’s book on the British plan called Operation Mincemeat during World War II. There’s plenty of intrigue, clashing personalities, and drama, but the entire scenario—while embellished for film audiences—is true.
Tales From the Tower
As with Operation Mincemeat, these stories are startling and true. This one involves one of history’s most notorious prisons, Colditz Castle in Germany, and the exceptional cast of Allied prisoners who were locked away for four years within its thick stone walls.The towering fortress held the most defiant and obstinate of captured men, most of them officers, who found their way there via their previous escape exploits from other prisons. Colditz Castle would test their mettle; their ingenious escapes, whether successful or not, would become legend.
Macintyre does a brilliant job of sharing with readers these daring escapes, whether they be done through tunnels, cutting barbed wire fences, or dangling precariously on twisted sheet ropes. One smaller prisoner was literally stuffed inside a mattress to make his getaway.
Colditz was its own society: a mini-Europe of sorts. Initially, most of the officers were British, French, Dutch, Belgian, or Polish. There were many languages spoken. And for the most part, the German officers running the prison were intent on adhering to the Geneva Convention, ensuring this was a prison for gentlemen run by gentlemen—again, for the most part.
Macintyre also delves into the various backgrounds and personalities, not only those of the prisoners but also of the German officials guarding them. He explores the full range of human joy and despair, the heroes and the traitors, the broken and the unbroken, and how the particularly indomitable and optimistic ones kept morale strong and hopeful.
The men imprisoned in Colditz Castle did not suffer to the extreme of being in a concentration camp, but their lives were not without stress. Several went mad. Others were frustrated and combative, and continually focused on escape. Most of the time they were hungry, as the German food rations were not plentiful. Mercifully, the Red Cross parcels helped fill the gap.
The men, though surviving in chaos, did not lose their creativity or their caring. In addition to escape plans, they cooperated in theater productions inside the prison walls and competed in games of soccer in the courtyard.
Sensational Storytelling
Macintyre thoroughly engages the reader in the unforgettable cast of compelling characters. There are the famous ones, like British Army officer Pat Reid. He is one of a few to escape in 1942 to neutral Switzerland.But there are many lesser-known heroes who are just as remarkable, like the Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar. Ridiculed by most, and the only Indian prisoner, his ill treatment and eventual fate reads like fiction. He endures much, and Macintyre has him surfacing and resurfacing throughout the book. No spoilers on what eventually happens to him.
For all of you James Bond fans, you’ll relish reading about Christopher Clayton Hutton, known as “Clutty.” He’s not the dashing fellow, but rather the quiet, bespeckled one whose inventive mind creates more gadgets and ways to hide maps and money (even a compass in a walnut) than you’d think logistically possible. His covert devices enable many to escape well-equipped enough to survive.
Florimond Duke is the first American to find himself at Colditz. He served in World War I and is one of America’s oldest paratroopers and least successful spies.
Douglas Bader is one tough pilot and prisoner. Seemingly undaunted by his two prosthetic legs, Bader pivots between being ruthlessly inconsiderate and pompous and being stalwart and courageous.
Drama builds as the years come and go, marking the successful and not so successful escapes from Colditz. As Hitler’s war machine begins to falter, so does any adherence to the Geneva Convention. Death at the hands of the Nazis was increasingly feared. A failed attempt was initially handled by a return to the prison. Later, it could result in a bullet in the back of the head.
The book is interspersed with actual photographs of the players Macintyre so vividly brings to life. Readers can look at young Michael Alexander, who pretends to be the nephew of a British general, or perhaps have some empathy for Reinhold Eggers, the chief German chronicler of Colditz Castle. Civilized and well educated, he does his best to treat his charges well.
Macintyre breathes new life into memorable stories of courage and faith told from within the walls of Colditz Castle. This read will clutch at your heart with its humanity, humor, and gritty endurance.
