Franz von Werra
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Franz von Werra (1914-1941) was a German WWII fighter ace who escaped from a British POW camp in Canada.
Franz von Werra was born on July 13, 1914, to impoverished Swiss parents in Leuk, a town in the Canton of Valais, one the Cantons of Switzerland. Later he and his sister were given to the care of an aristocratic German family.
Before World War II, von Werra joined the Luftwaffe. In the beginning of the war he served in the French campaign. He distinguished himself by boisterous behavior, a pet lion he kept at the aerodrome, and boasts of imaginary kills. He also used the title Baron, although he was not really entitled to it.
On September 5 1940, during the Battle of Britain, von Werra's Me109 was shot down over Kent, possibly by friendly fire. He successfully crash-landed on a field, was captured and eventually sent to London District Prisoner of War Cage. He was interrogated for two weeks and four days and eventually taken to a POW Camp No.1, at Grizedale Hall in the Lake District, Cumbria.
Next October 7 von Werra tried to escape for the first time during a daytime walk outside the camp. He had arranged the cooperation of other prisoners in the group. At a usual stop, and while a fruit cart provided diversion and other German prisoners covered for him, von Werra slipped over a brick wall to a meadow.
When von Werra's escape was discovered, the army alerted the local farmers and the Home Guard. On October 10 two Home Guard troopers captured him from a hoggarth but he escaped again. On October 12 a search party captured him when he was trying to hide underwater. Von Werra was sentenced to 21 days of solitary confinement for trying to escape but on November 3 was transferred to Camp 10 in Swanwick, Derbyshire.
In Camp 13, also known as the Hayes camp, von Werra joined a group of would-be-escapees calling themselves Swanwick Tiefbau A. G. (Swanwick Excavations, Inc.), who were planning to dig an escape tunnel. They worked in the tunnel for a month until it was completed December 17 1940. Camp forgers equipped them with money and forged identity papers. On December 20 von Werra and four others slipped out of the tunnel under the cover of antiaircraft fire and singing of the camp choir. Others were recaptured only a few days later.
Von Werra decided to go alone. He had taken along his flying suit and decided to masquerade as Captain Van Lott, Dutch RAF pilot. He claimed to a friendly locomotive driver that he was a downed bomber pilot trying to reach his unit, and asked him to take him to the nearest RAF base.
In Codnor Park Station, a local clerk treated him with suspicion but eventually agreed to arrange his transportation to the RAF at Hucknall. Police also questioned him but von Werra convinced them he was harmless. At Hucknall, squadron leader Boniface asked for his credentials and he claimed to be based on Dyce near Aberdeen. When Boniface was confirming this, von Werra excused himself and ran to the nearest hangar, trying to tell a mechanic that he was cleared for a test flight when Boniface arrived to arrest him at gunpoint. He was sent back to Hayes and put under armed guard.
In January 1941 von Werra was sent to Canada alongside most other German prisoners of war. His group was to be taken to a camp on the north shore of Lake Superior, Ontario so von Werra begun to plan escape to the United States, which was still neutral at the time. On January 21 he jumped out of the prison train through a window, again with the help of other prisoners, when the train had left Montreal and ended up near Smith Falls, 30 miles from the St Lawrence River. Seven other prisoners tried to escape from the same train as well but they were recaptured. Von Werra's absence was noticed the next afternoon.
Von Werra made his way over the border to Ogdensburg and turned himself over to the police. Immigration authorities charged him with entering the country illegally, so von Werra contacted the local German consul. Thus, he came into attention of the press and told them a very embellished version of his story. When US and Canadian authorities were negotiating his extradition, the German vice-consul helped him over the border to Mexico. Von Werra proceeded to Rio de Janeiro where he traveled to Barcelona, to Rome and eventually to Germany in April 18 1941.
Von Werra became a hero. Hitler granted him the Iron Cross, and he married. He also commented to condition of the German prison camps, comparing them to British ones that may have led to better conditions to British POWs. Von Werra returned to the Luftwaffe and was initially deployed to the Russian front but later flew fighter patrols over the North Sea.
On October 25 1941, von Werra's plane disappeared in a routine patrol from the Netherlands north of Vlissingen, probably due to engine failure.
His story was the subject of a book called The One That Got Away by Kendall Burt and James Leasor published in 1956. This was later made into a film of the same name starring Hardy Krüger as von Werra.
References
- The One That Got Away by Kendall Burt and James Leasor (London, 1956)