They Spread Their Wings (36 page)

We walked to a farm south of Lommel where we spent the night and next morning the farmer bought us rail tickets to Antwerp; he told us not to speak at all during the journey as many Germans were travelling to and fro on this line. It was Sunday morning – 30 May – when we arrived in the city. We tried to find a bridge over the river without success and at about 14.00, frustrated and really hot from all the clothes we were wearing, we sat down on a park bench, pondering what to do next. There was an old man nearby so we decided to tell him who we were and ask for his help. Our luck held and he took us to a pub where the inn-keeper spoke English. Here they gave us cigarettes and beer, while some of the customers hugged us and told us they feared for our safety.

Someone led us to a shop owned by a Belgian woman, Madame Filke Cleaver-Bayer. Madame was married to an Englishman and she ran a second-hand clothes shop so was able to kit us out with some decent clothes and arranged for one of her sons to cut our hair. Looking much less scruffy, we were taken back to the pub where a man arrived and took us to his house in Chaussée de Merxem in the Antwerp suburb of Duerne, where we hid in the care of Marcelle Cornelis (known as ‘Jim’) and his wife, Séraphin Tange [Arthur met both after the war], until 8 June. This couple took an enormous risk to hide us for so long and they generously even gave up their own bedroom for us. Jim ran a laundry, so during this period we were able to get ourselves spruced up somewhat, while another chap took down our personal details so that our identities could be checked out with London.

In the evening of 8 June, at around six o’clock, a woman, Mariette Merjay and a youth arrived at the house from Brussels and escorted Maxie and me by train to that city. On arrival in Brussels this youth led us to a man – who I think was in the Salvation Army – standing outside the station, handed us over to him and he then took us to the house of Paul Calame-Rosset [said to be a Swiss national] in the southern suburb of Uccle. During supper his wife, who was supposed to be Irish, questioned us closely but seemed satisfied with our replies since I remained at the house until 23 June – although we had the feeling the Irish lady occasionally listened outside our bedroom door. Calame-Rosset took both of us to the cellar of his house and showed us a secret tunnel that ran for several yards before coming up among some bushes on a bank. He said it was the means of escape if the Germans came and urged us to try it out. We both got into it and emerged the other end – but on reflection we were pretty foolish to try it out because it could so easily have become our grave! On the 22nd for some unaccountable reason, Maxie was taken away to another house but we met up again a day or so later when I was moved to the Salvation Army man’s house.

Reunited, Maxie and I had breakfast before being moved into the centre of Brussels, to a flat in the main square occupied by a young nurse named Louise. She moved out to allow us to stay there until 26 June. Meals were brought to us by the Salvation Army man and the nurse. During the afternoon of 26 June two ladies, Caroline Maes [née Gouilly], a school teacher, and her aunt appeared and took us by train to their house in Rue des Héllènes, Ixelles, Brussels.

From Caroline’s flat we were taken on 1 July by a woman and a stout man in a car, to a place known as ‘The Captain’s’ house, somewhere in Brussels and it was here we met up with several other airmen who had been shot down. ‘The Captain’ – one of the aliases of a man named Dezitter – didn’t live there but visited us every day and different airmen kept to-ing and fro-ing every day. Visits were arranged to see a photographer [possibly Jean-Marcel Nootens] for pictures to be used in forged documents such as passports with false names – but I have forgotten what my own
nom de plume
was.

We stayed with ‘The Captain’ until about 8 July, when our ‘host’ issued us each with identity card, passport and railway ticket and said: ‘You are leaving now; you boys will soon be back in England.’ Under the watchful eye of a couple of ‘escorts’ – a Belgian lady doctor and an unknown man – six of us: me, Maxie, Sgts Cole, Hugo, Mullaney and Smith, were driven to the Gare du Midi, Brussels’ main railway station, bound for Paris. There was a very nervy moment when the train was brought to a halt at the Belgian/French border near Mons and searched by German soldiers. Everyone was ordered off the train for a search and passport check. Feeling decidedly on edge, we remained in our carriage and when a German soldier entered our compartment we thought the game was up. However, our guide had a conversation with him and he gave us just a cursory look then went away – we were the only ones who did not leave the train – all of which on reflection did seem very odd and it certainly set us thinking. It seemed very funny that they didn’t search us. However, the train arrived in Paris at 14.30, without any more trouble and we were taken by Metro to a hotel in the south of the city. Sgts Cole and Hugo were separated and taken to another hotel but rejoined us later without comment. As meals were not available in the hotel we were taken out by the guides and treated to a really good meal before returning to the hotel for the night.

Next morning, 9 July, I woke at 07.00 feeling quite confident that before too long I would be in dear old England again. Our hopes were raised because a man arrived at 08.00 to take us, he said, to a railway station to begin our journey southwards to Bordeaux and Spain. But this is where it all started to go wrong.

Walking through the streets of Paris, after half an hour he handed us over to another man. Our new guide shook hands with all of us and wished us ‘good morning’ then we set off. After about ten minutes our little group was straggling somewhat and the new chap became agitated, all the time urging us to keep together. We had just closed ranks and were walking down a long tree-lined avenue when all of a sudden eight men in plain-clothes, brandishing pistols, rushed at us from the side streets. They surrounded us, shouting ‘Hands up! You are British airmen!’ Our ‘guide’ was last seen disappearing in the distance and that was the last we ever saw of him. We were all searched, handcuffed and marched to board a bus that was conveniently waiting just around the corner. Our destination was the notorious Fresnes prison and we were to be guests of the dreaded Gestapo.

The airmen were betrayed by pro-German collaborators who had infiltrated the ‘Jackson’ escape line and caused havoc. There were several such groups of collaborators working in Holland, Belgium and France during the war but it was alleged that the ringleader of the particular operation that snared Arthur and Maxie was Prosper Dezitter, sometimes known as ‘the man with the missing finger’, a Belgian with a highly chequered background who spoke fluent English. He used many aliases and carried out his deceptions in conjunction with his mistress Florentine Dings, who also used many different identities, and with several other male and female collaborators. He often passed himself off as a British officer, calling himself ‘Captain Jackson’ or simply ‘The Captain’. Having operated since the beginning of the war, he managed to infiltrate several groups of Belgian people who were genuinely assisting Allied soldiers and airmen, and was responsible for the arrest of many and the death of many patriots. The timing around when Arthur and Maxie were put into the Captain’s supposedly safe house in Brussels coincides with information alleging that it was Dezitter who was running this ‘safe’ house and fake escape line in Brussels at that time, and Arthur was indeed quite certain it was Prosper Dezitter whom he met.

After a life spent living by his wits, on the wrong side of the law on both sides of the Atlantic, Dezitter could be extremely plausible. Belgians he worked with were often fooled into thinking they were aiding a genuine British agent and a real escape line. Allied airmen were only too ready to trust any escape route on offer because it was the only hope they had. In this way over seventy RAF airmen were led into Gestapo traps from the ‘safe’ houses in Brussels – and among these unfortunates were Arthur and Maxie. In addition to them, it appears there were many USAAF airmen, together with RAF airmen from Antwerp and Bruges and a number of British soldiers, entrapped by Dezitter’s operation. The past, however, eventually caught up with both Dezitter and Dings and they were executed by firing squad in 1947.

Captured on 9 July along with Arthur and Maxie were: WO Frank Hugo, a bomb aimer, and Sgt William ‘Bill’ Cole, a flight engineer, both in the same No 7 Squadron crew; Sgt John (Jack) Smith from No 218 Squadron; and air gunner Sgt Walter Mullaney from No 429 RCAF Squadron – actually an American who had joined the RCAF. On arrival at Fresnes, the prisoners were separated and Arthur was first put into a tiny box measuring just 6ft high and 2ft wide, with a little shelf to sit on. There was a row of these boxes and he managed to communicate with the occupant of the next cubicle:

I asked, in a low voice, who was there and he said he was a Group Captain. Later on I found out he was Group Captain D.E.L. Wilson RAAF. He was station commander of RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor, an elderly chap who had gone on a raid as a passenger just to see what it was like but his aircraft was shot down and he ended up as a POW. Eventually he became the SBO [Senior British Officer] in Stalag Luft III.

Group Captain Wilson was appointed station commander at Holme-on-Spalding Moor on 1 April 1943. Aged 44, he went on a bomber operation on 22 June and was shot down. He evaded capture for some time, during which period he is also believed to have passed through Prosper Dezitter’s hands – which may have contributed to some unusual allegations about this officer’s own evasion experiences.

It was getting quite late in the day when Arthur was moved to a larger cell which – even in July – was cold and damp. All his possessions were taken from him and laid outside the cell door. He was given one blanket and left alone again for the night. Around six o’clock next morning he was given something hot to drink:

I still don’t know what it was – it was like nothing I ever tasted before. I never saw my possessions again. Later that day I was interrogated by a Gestapo officer. He told me a few things about me – who the rest of my crew were and that I was trained in Canada and so on. It was all true but I never let on.

After interrogation Arthur was taken to the top floor of the five-storey prison and locked in cell No 484:

It was at least a bit larger cell, being about twelve feet by nine feet and I was put in with Frank Hugo, Bill Cole and Walter [Arthur referred to him as ‘Larry’] Mullaney. We were kept in that place for six weeks during which time we were very hungry, slept on the floor, sharing it with fleas and other assorted bugs.

Arthur Edgley, POW No 222506, July 1943. (Arthur Edgley)

It was rumoured that Fresnes – the headquarters of the Gestapo in Paris – held several thousand inmates at this time, among them political prisoners, saboteurs, members of the French Resistance and spies – Arthur believed the legendary Odette Sansom was there at the same time as him – many of whom were shot: a daily occurrence. Although some airmen were beaten, Arthur said he was not and after being robustly questioned again by the Gestapo, despite many threats of punishment and even death, he stuck to giving just his rank, name and number, ‘which did not please them’, he said. From time to time his six-week incarceration did have a few lighter moments, as Arthur recalled:

All the cell doors in Fresnes had a small glass-covered hole, so the guards could keep an eye on us. One day we heard a guard tramping along the corridor and could hear him sliding the eyehole covers. Larry Mullaney said: ‘watch this’. A second or two before the guard got to our door Walter put his eye right up to the glass. When the guard looked in the two eyes met about an eighth of an inch apart, then all hell broke loose with the guard running round bawling his head off.

The walls of our cell had scores of names scratched on them, nearly all French, with dates going back many years. The cell had two windows, joined in the centre and opening inwards. They were locked and had frosted glass so we could not see outside. There was also a small ventilator just below the ceiling and one day, coming from it we heard an English voice asking if anyone could hear him. Because the vent was so high up, one of us bent down while the other two lifted the fourth on to his back so that we could converse. The unseen man said he was an RAF airman who had been told he would be leaving the prison in a few days and had been given some tobacco – but did not smoke. If we could contact him somehow he would give us the tobacco. His cell was on the fourth floor, one below ours.

We undid the binding on one of our blankets and when they brought our bread (just a tiny piece of crust) we tied a piece on the end of the blanket cotton and lowered it down the ventilator. Luck was on our side. Our unknown benefactor got it, tied a little bundle of tobacco and cigarette papers to it and we gently hauled the line back up. We rolled two or three cigarettes and now the next problem was how to get a light! This was resolved when our soup was brought in by a Frenchman under the guard of an elderly German soldier. We asked the German for a light, which he gave while telling us he had been a prisoner of war in England during the First World War.