You might have heard of the story of the Trojan horse, when the Greeks hid a strong force
of armed warriors inside a wooden horse and got that horse into the city of Troy, after
which they were able to spring their trap.
Today we have a kind of Trojan horse story with a twist, in which a wooden horse was
used to get out of somewhere, not in.
This is one of the most dazzling prison escape stories ever told, and the best thing is it’s
completely real.
The story starts with a Canadian-born British man called Oliver Philpot, or “Ollie”
to his friends.
During World War II this man became an excellent air force pilot and he joined what was then
called The Norwegian Campaign, which was to liberate Norway from Germany.
Things didn’t go too well for Ollie, though, and his plane was shot down on 11 December
1941.
The plane ditched in the North Sea, and Philpot with three other guys floated at sea in a
dinghy for a couple of days until they were picked up by a German ship.
First Ollie had to spend a bit of time in a prison hospital in Norway, but was later
transferred to a prisoner of war transfer camp in Germany.
From there he was moved to a place called Stalag Luft III, which translates as “Main
Camp.”
This was located in a town called Sagan in Western Poland.
There he joined other RAF men, got transferred again, but later sent back to this same camp.
As the story goes, many of the captured men brewed up escape plans all the time, but escape
was obviously problematic.
Not only was it extremely difficult to get over or under the walls of the camp, but if
the men were seen it’s likely they’d be shot.
Even if they did breach the fences the problem then was getting to a safe place.
British men wandering around western Poland at this point in time weren’t exactly in
a safe place.
Ollie was quite a creative man, though, and he came up with the idea of inventing an identity
for himself.
He would become a Norwegian man that sold margarine, and if he was stopped, well, he
was just on business.
His name would be Jon Jörgensen.
The reason he chose this line of work was because he had worked in a similar field when
he was a civilian and also because he was aware not many people he would come across
in this part of the world would speak Norwegian.
So Ollie had his character and he had a very convincing back story which its said he spent
many days and nights creating.
The problem now of course was coming up with a way to get out of the camp.
Well, two other guys called Lieutenant Michael Codner and Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams
already had a plan and this plan kind of involved a reverse Trojan Horse trick.
In 1943, they told Ollie about their plan and he was enlisted into the escape.
The men constructed what is called a wooden vaulting horse, a piece of equipment used
to keep fit.
This was then placed about 100 feet from the camp fence.
Throughout the day lots of the men would vault over this thing as part of their exercise
routine, and this didn’t look strange at all to German soldiers who were used to watching
these fit and strong men exercise each day.
What the Germans didn’t know was that a lot was going down under that horse, because
each day at the beginning of the routine either Codner or Williams was taken out hidden inside
of that horse and they would then start digging a tunnel from underneath it.
The problem with this was what to do with all the and earth that was removed?
That’s where Olli came in, because his job was to take what had been dug up and get rid
of it around the camp.
After each session of digging the hole was then covered.
The way they kept the tunnel from collapsing was by lining it with wood the men had taken
from Red Cross parcel boxes.
For three hours every day the digging would be done, while the German soldiers looked
on at all these men competing to see who was the best vaulter.
This was all worked out with finesse, with the men always filling the same number of
bags of sand for each session.
They did change the system around, but they stuck with an agreed upon number of bags each
time.
One of the problems when they increased the session time was the guys doing the vaulting
would get really tired, but by October the tunnel was almost complete.
It reached farther than the fence.
That’s the only place they wanted to be.
It’s said the men were almost caught on several occasions because part of their tunnel
crumbled after digging or the guards almost fell through it.
The diggers knew how far from the ground the tunnel was because they used a sharp object
to measure the distance.
It was only 30 inches (76 cm) from the ground.
The men decided that on the moonless night of 29 October, 1943, they would make their
escape.
In total the tunnel had taken them 114 days to dig.
At 1 pm that day Codner was taken out and sealed inside the tunnel.
There was a count that day, but the other prisoners managed to falsify the number.
At 5 pm, both Williams and Philpot were also sealed inside the tunnel.
The only thing to do now was wait until a bit later when they had a cover of darkness.
That they did, but things didn’t exactly go as planned.
When they decided to go up from the tunnel they were actually 12 inches short of their
target place, and on any other night this would have likely led to the capture of the
men.
Fortunately for them, the sentry that could have seen them was late that night.
The guys, covered in earth and sand, emerged from the ground like moles.
They were dressed all in black and had black masks covering their faces, and so once they
had made it to the nearby woods they weren’t exactly easy to spot.
It was then decided that both Codner and Williams would go to a place called Stettin and Ollie
would head for Danzig, a somewhat longer trip.
He had his story all worked out as we said, and if he should meet anyone on the way he
would just say that he was selling margarine and he was from Norway.
What he really hoped was he wouldn’t bump into anyone who understood Norwegian because
while he might be able to mimic the accent he actually couldn’t speak a word of the
language.
He at least looked the part, because he had managed to acquire a black civilian jacket
which he wore with some RAF officer’s pants.
These just looked like any pants.
He was carrying a small briefcase and inside were only cleaning and shaving essentials.
He also had grown a moustache that looked a lot like the bristles on the top lip of
a man called Adolf.
He had some money and so travelled by train to a place called Frankfurt-on-Oder, and from
there his plan was to get to a place called Küstrin and then onto Danzig.
All this seemed to be going quite well, but at one point he was approached by a police
officer.
It seemed, though, that the false papers he had were good enough to fool the cop.
On another occasion on the train he got off lucky.
He’d fallen asleep only for the train to jolt and knock him from his seat.
Without thinking he cursed out loud, but not in German, in English.
All the other passengers did, though, was laugh at him.
So, there he was, 23 hours after the initial escape, in Danzig.
A job well done, so he bought himself a beer.
He then headed to the docks where he got a room and thought about getting out of Danzig.
The next morning he saw a Swedish ship in the water that was loading up on coal.
That’s a place he wanted to be so he snuck onto that ship after darkness fell.
He then crawled carefully into the galley, only to find a cup of hot chocolate.
Ollie drank that and then hid in a coal bunker.
It’s said that the captain of this ship, a vessel named Aralizz, saw Ollie while he
was hiding and demanded he get off the ship as he was a risk to the crew.
If the Germans discovered an escaped POW on that ship that certainly would have gotten
the Swedes into a lot of trouble.
He didn’t get off the ship, though, and he was helped by a seaman and an engineer
and hidden some place.
When the ship was finally far from land Ollie again greeted the captain who by this time
said ok, we are far away now, you are a guest of the ship.
Nonetheless, when the ship arrived at the Swedish town of Södertälje he had to spend
a night in the police cells.
The next day, though, he was let out and he went in search of a British diplomatic office.
He’d been on the road for a total of five days, and he was met with cheers when he found
safety at something called a legation, which is similar to a consulate.
And guess what he found out there?
His two comrades Codner and Williams had also found safety after their journey.
They too had gone to Sweden and with all three men safe their escape became known as the
“home run.”
Ollie would not fly planes for the RAF again during the war, and after being debriefed
by MI9 he was given the post of senior scientific officer at the Air Ministry.
He was also awarded the Military Cross.
He lived until the ripe age of 80, had a successful business career and had five kids during two
marriages.
We know all about his story because he wrote a book about his escape called Stolen Journey.
If you are wondering how Ollie managed to find his way around many strange places during
his ordeal, part of his escape pack included a homemade compass.
A guy called Jerry Dawkins, a fellow prisoner at the camp, had put this together from bits
of a gramophone, parts of a razor blade, and also cardboard and phosphorous from broken
watches.
While it all might sound like a wonderful adventure, if you read that book Stolen Journey
you’ll find that escaping a prison camp for Olli was a rough ordeal and a very unpleasant
experience from start to end.
Well, not the very end.
Part of that book reads, “Escape is all coldness.
Coldness and waiting.
It's heat sometimes in digging and running away.
But mostly it's coldness and hunger and hanging about waiting.”