Wilfred Ponsonby: a conjuror in captivity (Part 2)
Conjuring in captivity
Morale boosting activity in Oflag IX-A/H (Spangenberg / Elbersdorf) was dominated by a rich variety of camp entertainment.
“I remember we used to have a lot of theatricals in the camp and in what was our dining hall we made a stage for our plays.”
Naturally, Ponsonby played a leading role in organising the shows. For example, he wrote the script for a production of Alice in Wonderland which the prisoners put on. Of course, when revues or variety bills were scheduled, he would step forward and do a turn as a magician.
Ponsonby’s letters home would ask for clothing, extra food, books and games to be sent out to him. He also asked for magic props to help keep others entertained and stave off the boredom.
On 23 November 1940, a letter to his wife asked her to send him, “I would also like one or two conjuring props, thumb tips for paper tearing & cigarette trick, etc.”
A few months later, on 28 April 1941, he wrote, “I would like some conjuring gadgets. Send these in my personal parcel not from a shop. The Sympathetic Silks i.e. 3 pairs of silks (one pair heavy silk, the pink pair if you can find them & two pairs thin jap. silk contrasting colours – you will have to make these up.) They should be a yard square; one box elastic bands, Anchor brand No. 8. Also, hank for rope trick. They are in my uniform case at Fleet. Thumb tips,”
Of course, his letters contained hidden messages for British military intelligence. One can imagine the miscellany of magic terms he used offered the possibility of better disguising the secret code.
Ever on the lookout for escape options, Ponsonby’s escape committee soon decided that some construction work the German authorities were doing at Elbersdorf offered the opportunity for an escape. So, Ponsonby teamed up with two New Zealand officers and a British officer and set about organising one.
“The Germans were doing some rebuilding behind some of our washbasins, and there was a chance of digging through there… The four of us had gone down to the lavatories with civilian clothes under our battledress. We had taken off our boots because we did not want to make any noise. I think they had doubled the guards that night but we managed to get down there where we hid… We removed a washbasin and this gave us access to the outside world.”
Unfortunately, a guard heard the escaping POWs before they exited the hole. He came by and shone a torch in their direction. When the guard saw the hole, he shouted out and raised the alarm.
Ponsonby and the others raced back to their beds before the Germans came searching for them and avoided any punishment.
After days or months of preparation, failed escape attempts are incredibly demoralising. Fortunately, Ponsonby’s enthusiasm and optimism helped him through the dark, weary years in prison camps.
“He was always ‘on the go,’ working with the escape committee, contriving ways of communicating by code with his brother-in-law in M.I. and organising ‘race meetings’ to pass the evenings with his fellow prisoners. One almost gets the impression from some of his letters home from the POW camps he was enjoying himself until one reads also of the desperate longing to be back home with his wife and children,” wrote the publisher of his autobiography.
Off to Switzerland…
In early autumn 1941, Ponsonby and a colleague called Atkinson (‘Atco’) planned an escape to Switzerland. The first part of their plan was to get the camp Medical Officer to send them for treatment at the hospital at Obermaßfeld.
Obermaßfeld Reserve-Lazarette 1249 (or Stalag IX-C(a)) was a large hospital, about 60 miles away. While the Germans provided the facility, captured British, Canadian and New Zealand medical staff operated it. Atco knew the hospital layout from being a patient there after the Battle of France.
The pair took civilian clothes with them, hidden under their battledress, and enough chocolate and oatmeal to sustain them on their escape. After three days in the hospital, Ponsonby and Atco escaped undetected via a back door. As neither could speak German, their plan was to walk down the railway lines at night to avoid meeting any Germans. Then, to hide and rest up during the day.
Headed for Switzerland, some 250 miles away, they walked for twelve days.
“When we were about halfway to Switzerland, it was getting light and we had to hide. There was an enormous box. So, we got into this box and lay down.”
The escape was going well until a minor act led to a major disaster:
“We were very unlucky because a fellow who was working there wanted something for his tractor. So, he opened this box to get whatever he wanted – and there we were lying in the box! He sounded the alarm and down came the troops and took us all to a hotel. We said we were Italians, working on the railway. They were suspicious, I think, but gave us some breakfast. It was about 11 o’clock in the morning. Then they sent for someone who spoke Italian. Then the game was up.”
Following normal procedure, the two soldiers were returned to the camp they escaped from. This demonstrated to the other prisoners that their escape failed. Once back at Oflag IX A/H, Ponsonby and Atco were given ten days in solitary confinement as their punishment.
Prisoners of war who escaped from a normal POW camp, especially serial offenders like Ponsonby, were often sent off to Oflag IV-C, a high security prisoner-of-war camp otherwise known as Colditz Castle.
Ponsonby may have been destined for Colditz, had he not been on the ‘grande-blessés’ (French: seriously wounded) list. This was a list which identified POWs considered medically unfit and in need of hospital treatment.
Under the Geneva Convention, prisoners who can no longer fight because of illness or disability are entitled to be repatriated to their home country. This is typically in exchange for enemy prisoners in a similar condition.
With some others on the grande-blessés list at Oflag-IX-A/H were amputees, Ponsonby couldn’t understand how he got passed for repatriation. But he was thin and didn’t look well. Plus, the panel of three doctors who examined him suspected tuberculosis.
But, just before the tunnel planned to surface in October 1941, Ponsonby and fifty others were told, quite suddenly, that they were to be transferred from Oflag IX-A/H for repatriation. They packed up their few belongings and were sent by train to a grande-blessés repatriation camp near Rouen in France.
A trip to the races
In normal circumstances, keen horseman Wilfred Ponsonby would have welcomed a trip to the racecourse at Sotteville. But, October 1941, wasn’t the best time to visit.
To prepare for the repatriation, the racecourse was transformed into a temporary camp to hold 1,300 medically unfit POWs. Accommodation was in old Nissen huts, while the permanent buildings of the racetrack, such as the pavilions and paddocks and cafe, were used for administrative purposes and patient care. Rouen’s racecourse had form for this; during World War One, it was one of the B.E.F.’s main field hospitals.
The German military preferred to keep Allied prisoners in Germany or Poland. But negotiations were well advanced for the grand-blessés to be repatriated in an exchange. Rouen sits astride the River Seine with access to the sea and Dieppe and Le Havre ports are nearby, from where the POWs could be shipped back to England.
Most prisoners were not interested in escaping from Rouen. This was because they were too injured or ill for it, or because they didn’t want to jeopardise their impending repatriation. Ponsonby probably thought the same, as he gave away all his escape equipment before leaving Oflag IX A/H.
But, as the likelihood of repatriation withered, he turned his attention back to escaping. One of his first acts was to steal a pair of curtains from one of the racecourse buildings to make into a civilian suit. Then, along with his sidekick Atco, Ponsonby decided to dig a tunnel to escape from the racecourse.
They dug under the floorboards in one hut, first digging a shaft 10 or 12 feet deep, before heading out horizontally towards the perimeter wire around the camp. They dug undetected for several weeks, hoping to complete the tunnel by spring time.
While the tunnelling was going on, the team contacted the local resistance movement. The resistance formed a plan to get four of the prisoners away once the tunnel was finished. The prisoners were to be given papers, civilian clothes and taken south to Free France. But this didn’t work out, because of a security clampdown by the Germans after the Resistance killed several of their officers in Paris and Rouen.
Ponsonby bet that the repatriation wouldn’t work out and he was right. At the eleventh hour, negotiations between the British and German governments faltered. The exchange was called off. (It had been so close to happening that the German prisoners had actually boarded a ship in Folkestone, until the German High Command refused to take part in a numerically uneven interchange.)
Following this cancellation, 1,000 Allied POWs were transported back to Germany.
Frustratingly, this happened before they were even close to finishing the tunnel. Along with most of the others, Ponsonby was moved by train to Stalag XXI-D in Poland. Only 300 POWs were temporarily left at Rouen in case the repatriation exchange was rebooted.
Although Ponsonby didn’t get to escape from his tunnel, three POWs did later use it, or possibly another tunnel (accounts of this differ). The POWs hid in it when the temporary camp was closed and the final 300 POWs moved out. One of these, surgeon Philip ('Pip') Newman, managed a ‘home run,’ getting all the way back to the U.K. via Spain.
Related article: 'The Magician of Stalag Luft III' (Parts 1-3) tells the story of Lieutenant Commander John Casson naval aviator, magician, prisoner-of-war in Stalag Luft III. Blog link
Related article: Verdini: Czech magician escapes Nazi blitzkrieg three times, fights in the Battle of Britain...and joins E.N.S.A., a blog about an Eastern European magician who fought in the Battle of France, evacuated from Dunkirk and then fought in the Battle of Britain, before entertaining Allied troops. Blog link
Related article: 'Hitler's V-Weapons: Magicians and the battle against the V-1 and V-2' gives an account of the impact of Hitler's V-1 and V-2 rockets on magicians, and how some were involved in defeating them. Blog link.
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