In earlier posts I described Dutch-Paris’s contributions to the iconic WWII of the Engelandspiel (Operation North Pole) and the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III. Today let’s look at the role that Dutch-Paris played in an escape of Allied POWs from the maximum security prison at Colditz Castle. It was difficult enough to get out of Colditz that there’s now a board game about it, but the Germans had made a strategic error in putting all the POWs who had tried to escape from other camps together in one place. They really didn’t have a whole lot more to do than plot another escape.

There were more than 30 successful escape attempts out of Colditz, although less than three dozen of the escapees made it out of the Third Reich. On 14 October 1942, a Canadian who flew for the RAF before being captured in April 1940, and three other POWs walked out of Colditz. They split into groups of two for the journey from Colditz to Switzerland, with our man arriving on 18 October 1942. Not terribly surprisingly, he needed medical care and a fair bit of recuperation to regain his strength.

By the end of 1943, however, our Canadian pilot was ready to get back to his base. The British military attache in Bern arranged with the Dutch military attache in Bern for him to travel from Switzerland to Spain with Dutch-Paris. Part of that arrangement was that the British paid all the costs for such things as false documents, black market food and lodging, train tickets and the passeurs over the Pyrenees. If this man took the same route as other British military men in Switzerland, he and a small group of fugitives crossed into France in the Genevois near the village of Collonges-sous-Saleve. They probably took a bus to Annecy, where they boarded a train to Lyon and then to Toulouse. In Toulouse they may have had to wait for a few days for enough people to arrive to make up a convoy over the Pyrenees to Spain.

Our man travelled with Dutch Engelandvaarders who arrived in Toulouse from Paris. Some of them had left the Netherlands under the aegis of a different group that the Germans caught up to in November 1943. Those arrests stranded them in Paris until one of the resisters who was helping them and had not been arrested made contact with Dutch-Paris. On 18 December our Canadian left Toulouse with a group of three Frenchmen, two Italians and seven Dutchmen. They traveled to a rendez-vous point in the foothills via local train, truck and taxi. The Dutchmen and Canadian were all with Dutch-Paris. It’s not clear if the Italians and Frenchmen were or not. Passeurs often combined fugitives from different networks into a single convoy.

The two passeurs, both local Frenchmen, began the trek at 2:00 pm with the simple plan of walking, walking and walking. They expected to be in Spain the next day but the Dutchmen had considerable trouble walking up and down mountains. The snow in the passes and the rainstorm that made everything slippery didn’t help. When individuals collapsed and couldn’t go on, they got up and went on with the help of brandy poured over sugar cubes or a bottle of pills the pilots used that one of the Dutchmen had brought with him.

They reached Spain too exhausted to register that they’d passed out of Nazi occupied territory. The Spanish Guardia Civils lying in wait behind a boulder at the entrance to the first village were very friendly and escorted the group to an inn. The Canadian and Dutchmen were allowed to call their diplomatic representative to come pick them up and pay their hotel bill. The Frenchmen and Italians were taken to an internment camp.