The Thruster
THE One That Got Away, by Kendal Burt and James Leasor (Collins and Michael Joseph, 16s.), is a fascinat- ing story and will find many readers; but some of them. I suspect, will share my own regret that the authors felt obliged to adopt towards its central character an attitude so tinged with prefectorial disapproval. Franz von Werra is dead. He may have been vain, snobbish, disingenuous and given to bragga- docio; but he was an exceptionally brave and resourceful young man, who scored handsomely off his country's enemies and in the process performed a service of great value to the Luftwaffe. In this book his achievements are not underrated, but the account of them is interlarded too often for my taste with reminders that the man was a bounder.
Von Werra's Me. 109 was shot down on September 5, 1940, and he was taken prisoner. (The pilot who shot him down was killed in action that afternoon.) A few days earlier von Werra had claimed the destruction of nine Hurricanes in a single- handed attack on a British airfield, and this imaginary exploit, for which in due course he was awarded the Knight's Grand Cross, had been the subject of a fulsome broadcast over the German nglio. The deliberate falsification of combat-reports by some German pilots during the Battle of Britain was, the authors suggest, partly due to a 'scramble for honours' in what were expected to be the last few weeks of the war.
At the RAF Interrogation Centre the monitored transcript of von Werra's now highly embarrassing broadcast was a trump card in the hands of his skilled inquisitors, but they failed to extract any useful information from him. At that time German pilots and aircrew were given virtually no security briefing; they talked too much under interrogation and often had on their persons letters, diaries and other documents which provided the RAF Intelligence Staff with valuable clues. Von Werra made a close study of the methods whereby the British fished for indiscretions or attempted subtly to under- mine their prisoners' reticence; and his return to Germany in April, 1941, 'had consequences out of all proportion to its significance as an individual feat of daring.' A new and much more rigid system of aircrew security was framed in the light of his reports, and the Germans' own methods of interrogation, hitherto crude and superficial, were drastically overhauled.
From the first von Werra was resolved to escape. In 1940 the impulse to do so among the few German prisoners in England was not strong, for they expected—at least until the end of the summer—to be liberated at an early date by their all-conquer- ing compatriots. But von Werra had an unquenchable spirit. and less than five weeks after being shot down made an imagi- native though ill-found bid for freedom from a camp in the Lake District. He was recaptured after six days, given three weeks' solitary confinement and transferred to another camp in the Midlands. Despite opposition from the senior German officers, he made a tunnel and escaped just before Christmas with four companions, all of whom were speedily recaptured.
Posing as a Dutch pilot attached to Coastal Command, von Werra—with the help of the police—had himself driven in RAF transport to the nearest airfield. In the book the various British actors in this comedy are for the most part portrayed as having been fundamentally shrewd and suspicious, but there is more than a hint of wisdom-after-the-event about the way in which they have helped to reconstruct the parts they played; one cannot help suspecting that von Werra's bold bluff' backed by his charm, effectively prevailed at the time.
It was not, at any rate, our native nous that got the German into the cockpit of one of the first Hurricane Mark Its to be produced, for which an obliging Rolls-Royce mechanic was fetching the trolley-accumulator to enable him to take when, at the last minute, the imposture was seen through as the result of a telephone call to his alleged base. After this episode von Werra was shipped to Canada with a batch of other prisoners, concerting en route a promising plan to seize control of the liner if she left the convoy; but she never did this, and soon he was travelling across the snow' bound continent in a train. A brisk epidemic of diarrhoea among the prisoners, due to a surfeit of apples, complicated the problems of the Canadian guards, and on the second night von Werra, hatless and totally unprovided against the JanuarY cold, jumped out of the window while the train was in motion. He did this at a point where the railway ran close to the St. Lawrence, in which an ice-free channel barred his way. He dug a rowing boat out of the snow with his hands, hauled it across the ice and drifted, rudderless and oarless, through the darkness to American territory.
Von Werra was an exhibitionist, and even the German authorities were embarrassed by his boastfulness under the limelight which was now focused on him. He was ordered to pipe down while the German Embassy parried the attempts of the Canadian Government to have him extradited. The issue of this legal tussle was still in doubt when von Werra slipped over the Mexican border. From Mexico he was flown 1° Germany and in due course was posted to the Russian front. At odd intervals he dictated a highly coloured book about his exploits to a ghost-writer. Though inaccurate as well as pain' fully conceited, 'its tone throughout is surprisingly friendly and appreciative of the British,' and for this reason its pub' lication was banned by the Propaganda Ministry. From Russia—where the total of his officially acknowledged 'kills' rose, whether deservedly or not, to twenty-one—ills Gruppe was transferred to Holland, where in October,1941' his engine failing, he disappeared into the Channel. Two other aces, Udet and Molders. had been killed a few days earlier, and news that von Werra had been killed 'in action' was not released for a month. A Court of Inquiry on the loss of his air' craft ascribed it to the pilot's carelessness.
Thus, under a small cloud of falsehood, died an aeconl' plished liar. But though von Werra was a romancer and in some respects a fraud, he was a daring and brilliant escaper' and this excellent account of his adventures would have been better still if its tone had been less patronising. There arc worse things than generosity to a dead enemy, even if he did once
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