Magic at War

In this occult-themed blog, published on Halloween, stage magic  and ‘black magic’ overlap. In this remarkable story, a magician and his  confederate use a Ouija board, conjuring techniques and deceptive thinking to pull off the most celebrated prisoner-of-war escape of World War One. Picking-up on this idea, a  group of British POWs in World War Two attempted to repeat this success. Ouija - The Wonderful Talking Board A Ouija board is, typically, a flat wooden board about 2 feet by 1 foot in size. Painted or printed on one side of the board are all the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and the word ‘Goodbye.’ A teardrop-shaped device, known as a planchette (or an upturned small glass) manoeuvres around the board acting as a pointer. The idea of the board is that two or more people sit around the board, place their fingertips on the planchette, pose a question, and watch, dumfounded, as the planchette moves from letter to lett...

While this blog series focuses on how magicians helped fight World War Two, the history of magicians in warfare is a long one. Taking a break from World War Two, the blog below looks at five stories of magicians in captivity in the Nineteenth Century and in World War One. Giovanni Bartolomeo Bosco Italian-born Giovanni Bartolomeo Bosco (1793-1863) served in the Napoleonic army’s invasion of Russia in 1812. He was injured during the Battle of Borodino on the 7 September.  The fighting involved around 250,000 troops and left at least 68,000 killed and wounded, making Borodino the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars and the bloodiest single day in the history of warfare until World War One. To avoid capture, Bosco  pretended to be dead while lying on the battlefield. But a Cossack soldier started searching the dead bodies for loot. As the soldier searched Bosco, he realised Bosco was alive and took him prisoner. Little did he know Bosco picked the looter's pockets whil...