highway some four kilometres west of
Marathon, Ontario. There is no sign to indicate where it leads, and
no historical marker to record what happened
along that track sixty-two years ago.
The track leads up through dense bush and
across the bedrock of the Canadian Shield deeply
scarred by ancient glacial strength. Across
two major Hydro lines which, like the Trans Canada Highway,
are the results of post-war activity. Across
rocky outcrops and down into gullies still with inches of water
despite the dryness of the season. But then,
a kilometre or so along the track, the terrain changes to a
flat, sandy area of several acres. The trees
on this plain are younger than the spruce and poplar and
scrub bush that line the
track.
And then, around a curve in the track, the
debris field appears; bits of roofing material, rusted
metal from chimneys, a set of concrete steps
that lead nowhere and, under a low bush just off the track,
an industrial sized stove from the camp
kitchen with all its covers missing-like empty sockets where life
had once been. And resting against this
rusted hulk- a large, granite-coloured roasting pan, its lid.
missing.
The guard towers are long gone, as is any
evidence of the barbed wire that surrounded the whole
area. No evidence of where the huts had been
or where the tunnels had been dug. The graves of the
three who were killed no longer exist-their
bodies having been moved to join 184 other German prisoners
from both wars who were buried in the German
War Graves Cemetery in Kitchener, Ontario in 1970.
The bush is slowly retrieving this plain
unto itself, but sixty-two years ago this was the site of
Camp X, Angler. The camp was originally
built as Highway Construction Camp No. 12. It was one of
those camps that housed men who worked on
the construction of the Trans Canada Highway, a project
interrupted by the war. The placement of the
camp on sand and the elevation of the huts on concrete
pillars were major assets to the prisoners
as they planned their mass escape. Within days of their arrival
in January an escape committee was organized
and work began. The plan was to get at least 80
prisoners out on Hitler's fifty-second
birthday, April 20, 1941.
Three years before the well known Allied
prisoner escape from Stalag Luft 3 in Germany, the
German prisoners at Angler faced similar
problems and solved them in similar ways. For the German
prisoners, disposal of the sand from the
tunnel was a much easier matter than that facing the prisoners in
Stalag Luft 3. Because the huts were mounted
on concrete poles, the Canadian guards piled snow up to
the base of the hut walls to reduce the
effects of winter's icy blasts. This benign act provided the
prisoners with a secure place to dispose of
the sand from the tunnels. So the digging began. Each hut
was connected by a tunnel and all were
connected to the main tunnel that lead out, under the wire, for a
distance of 150 feet. As the tunnel
lengthened, wooden rails and a trolley facilitated the removal of sand
from the tunnel face. Lighting and
ventilation was also installed.
Because the tunnel was going through sand,
the digging was easy but there was always the fear
that the walls would collapse at great risk
to the tunnelers. That problem was easily solved. Using saws
made from gramaphone springs, teams of men
took turns crawling under the huts to saw and remove
joists that supported the floors. The
Canadians began to notice that the floors were beginning to sag, but
blamed that on what they concluded was
shoddy construction by the Canadian companies that built the
huts. The joists were taken, cut to size,
and fitted in the tunnel as the digging proceeded.
In 1964 Peter Desbarats wrote a three part
article about this escape," When the prisoners broke
out of Camp X". He went to Germany to
interview some of the men who had been involved in the
escape. One former prisoner told him that
they had so much extra clothing, that their tailor, Willi
Benderich, was able to make more than 100
civilian outfits by ripping the red POW circles from surplus
jackets, pants and overcoats. One hundred
knapsacks were made from pilfered mailbags and other
material.
Table knives were stolen from the mess hall
and sharpened and fitted with wooden handles
Each escapee was equipped with escape packs
containing about 50 pounds of stolen food- meatballs
stored in coffee tins, bread, biscuits,
tinned food, powdered eggs, chocolate, tea, sugar and vitamins.
Compasses were made from magnetized slivers
of razor blades mounted on phonograph needles inside
a cardboard box. Helmut Ackenhausen
described how he made a 12 foot kayak in two sections from
wood, flattened tin cans and oil cloth
stolen from mess hall tables. His plan was to paddle across Lake
Superior with a comrade and seek shelter in
a safe house in a country not yet at war.
Escape plans were imaginative and some of
them beyond belief- Ackenhausen's the most
audacious and foolhardy. He had no idea of
the fury that a Lake Superior storm can mount. In the days
following the capture of all the escapees,
guards found hidden in the tunnels, four sections of prefabricated
boats, equipped with paddles, sails, There
were shovels, haversacks, pulleys, a hammock and
numerous other articles.
Others were going to take a careful but
leisurely hike along the CPR to the Algoma Central and
thence to the Sault and freedom in the
U.S.A. Herbert Loffelmeier, Alfred Meithling and Kurt Rochel were
in a group of five that were going to hike
to the Lakehead and then make for the American border. Horst
3
Liebeck and
Karl Heinz-Grund had the most intelligent escape plan and, for a few days, the
most
successful. Angler camp was located just
north of the CPR and the two men had observed that every
night about 1 AM a westbound freight train
slowed almost to a halt as the steam locomotive laboured up
a steep grade near the camp. These battle
hardened Germans were convinced that they had a good
chance of outwitting the less experienced
Canadians who would be hunting for them. What a propaganda
victory it would be if 80 prisoners got
loose to celebrate Hitler's birthday on April 20th.
But what the Germans didn't reckon on were
the vagaries of Spring weather in that part of
Ontario. Five day before the planned escape
for April 20th, it began to rain. It rained for three days.
By
the 18th of April the tunnel had three feet of water in it
and it was still rising. The prisoners would have to
leave that night after roll call or not
leave at all. Twenty-eight prisoners crawled out of the tunnel and into
the rain which then turned to ice pellets
and then a raging blizzard. By the 20th, Liebeck and
Heinz-Grund
had made their way to the Lakehead and then
all the way to Medicine Hat before a suspicious member of
the RCMP put them under arrest. The men were
surprised to note that the local civilians regarded them
as celebrities and even asked them for
autographs.
On April 19, Oscar Broderix, Horst Streit,
Wilhelm Raab and Heinz Ettler were captured. The
vindictive attitude of the search party is
readily apparent from the treatment Oscar Broderix received. He
had part of his nose shot off; no medical
aid was offered until he was taken back to the camp. There the
Canadian doctor examined the wound and sewed
the remnants together without anesthetic.
Many of the escapees took refuge from the
blizzard in shacks along the CPR or in box cars and
were tracked down and captured. Loffelmeier,
Meithling, Rochel, Hauck and Genzelertook shelter in a
lean-to composed of a roof and two sides
built against a rock with the front entirely open. It was along the
route of the proposed highway. The records
of the Official Inquiry show that early on the morning of April
20th while it was still dark, L/Sgt Davies and Pte
Saunders of the Algonquin Regiment flashed a light into
the darkness of the lean-to and saw what
they thought were eight or ten escaped prisoners. They gave
the order for the prisoners to come out with
their hands up. Saunders and Davies had been informed
that the prisoners were armed with
formidable weapons. (The word ' formidable" appears three times in
the report of the Court of Inquiry and also
in subsequent documents). The' formidable' weapons were
table knives sharpened at one end and
equipped with wooden handles. Shots were fired. Loffelmeier
and Meithling came out as ordered and were
shot. Kurt Rochel was so seriously wounded that he was not
released from hospital until August 29. The
report of the medical evidence said that" the deaths of Gefr
Loffelmeier and Gefr Meithling were
primarily due to the loss of blood owing to the time necessary to get
back to Camp X and to send a carrying party
and medical assistance to the scene of the shooting."
The report of the Court of Inquiry goes on:"
The statements made subsequently by other
f
prisoners
through their Camp Leader and the official interpreter and the statement of the Camp
Leader
were not consistent with each other nor with
the evidence of the pursuit, party witnesses, nor the location
and lay-out of the lean-to which was
inspected by four members of the Court."
The statement of the prisoners'
representatives of the Swiss Consulate General in Canada, (
Switzerland being the protective power),
dated May 6, 1941, gives quite a different version of events:
"Upon being surrounded by five or six of the
Canadian soldiers, they were ordered to get up from the
ground and as they did so, they were shot
without any other preliminaries. They immediately fell flat
again, but as the rifles were fired from a
distance of about 3 to 5 metres, most of the bullets found their
mark, one man being hit by six bullets, two
by 5, and one by two, while Genzeler escaped being hit due
to the fact that he feinted death from the
very beginning of the shooting and to a major extent simply
through sheer luck in not being in the path
of the bullets fired.
" Proelss, ( German POW), was ordered out to
lead a party to bring in the dead and wounded
and entered the shack in which the POWs had
taken refuge on April 20th at 7:15 am with 16 of his
own
men. He was the first to enter the shack in
question and found 4 of his comrades in a heap on the ground
in a pool of blood, and ascertained that two
of them had been killed, one very badly wounded. Previous
to that no first aid had been given to the
wounded men. He was told by Rochel that they were shot
without any warning from a distance of a few
metres and that no attempt whatsoever to give first aid prior
to his arrival."
The soldiers involved in the killing of the
two prisoners were absolved of all blame- just another
act of war. Their defense was that these
prisoners were armed with knives and were about to charge the
soldiers who shot in self defense. In 1964
Peter Desbarats had no access to the files from the National
Archives, but his interviews in Germany with
prisoners who were involved gave a very different version
of what happened. They said that none of
them had weapons of any kind except table knives and forks
and that the Canadians fired as soon as the
prisoners came out of the lean-to with their hands up as
ordered. Kurt Rochel was one of the men
Desbarats interviewed. He had been seriously wounded in the
shooting and the only man interviewed who
witnessed the shooting of Loffelmeier and Meithling.
Dsbarats wrote that there was some
understandable bitterness in Rochel. He had not been given a
chance to surrender and the prisoners were
unarmed except for the table knives. He went on to say that
the deaths of Loffelmeier and Meithling were
unnecessary and tragic. They were both in their early
twenties and were good men. Rochel's plan
was to hike to the Lakehead and cut south to the United
States, but the blizzard that started a few
hours after the escape forced them to take refuge in the shack,
not far enough away to escape detection. A
sad footnote to these events was the killing of Martin Mueller
in June, 1941, by two drunken guards. They
shot him in the back of the head. A Court of Inquiry found
the guards not guilty of any misdemeanor
because Mueller was resisting arrest.
In the days following the escape rumours and
insinuations emerged about the help the prisoners
may have received from some people in the
local hamlets of Peninsula and Heron Bay. A man who
signed his letter." The Bushman", sent the
following letter to Col. Ralston, the Minister of Defense a
week after the escape.
" I think if you ask questions from people
in Peninsula you will find out lots. The two bootleggers
McCuaig and Soyyea are not here- they went
away the day of the escape. Why do they run away ?
Certain things were sent to Angler that
perhaps gave help to the prisoners. The camp interpreter, too,
acts pretty funny. I hope you understand the
people of Peninsula will help you"
(K.T. McCuaig operated a small store at Peninsula).
Another letter was sent to the Secretary of
State signed by someone who called herself Mrs.
Larsen of Schreiber,
Ontario:
" We are all trying to help by giving to the
Red Cross and we feel that the officers in charge of
the camp should do the same. At Angler Camp
there could be considerable money contributed to various
needs of this war. The money the prisoners
earn can be spent for different requirements. Last week Mrs
McCuaig at Peninsula sent an order of about
$ 75.00- cigars, hair tonic, etc., to the camp for the
prisoners on which she made about $ 35.00
profit as she herself said.
Had the officer ordered direct from the
wholesale house where other supplies are purchased and
sold to the prisoners at retail price a nice
little mount would be realized. This woman is alone most of the
time and has entertained George Szabo and
officers. I understand that Lt. Cay gave her these orders.
Before the prison break she sent many orders
to others. Surely these officers should try to help out too.
A timber contractor in Peninsula will not
keep any man in his employ who eats his meal at
McCuaig's restaurant- that's the kind of
place it is. A maid sent to McCuaigs from Port Arthur remained
there but three days on account of the way
the place is conducted.
It is a terrible thing to give her money
that should go to the Red Cross or the bombed victims in
England.
Very respectfully,
A. Larsen, Schreiber,
Ontario."
Col. Stethem's reply to this letter was
returned from the Schreiber post office with a note saying
that there was no such person living in
Schreiber at the time. Constable W.C.C. Gamble of the Ontario
Provincial Police investigated these
charges. His reports sheds light on them:
" When interviewing Mrs. McDonnell, wife of
the CPR agent at Peninsula she gave information
which corresponded practically word for word
with the anonymous letter received by the Secretary of
State. Enquiries revealed that Mrs.
McDonnell bears a reputation extending over many years for writing
anonymous letters to persons and other Gov't
Dep'ts.... There appears to be considerable rivalry and
bad feelings between the McCuaigs and the
McDonnells.... No information was gained that would
indicate any bootlegging being carried out
at Peninsula at this time."
Another
anonymous letter to Col. Stethem, Director of Internment Operations, suggested that
it
might be well" to look into the activities
of the Oxford Group in connection with the German prisoners'
escape.." Just what subversion the Group was
up to was not made clear, but perhaps it was its nonviolent
approach to living based on Biblical
principles that was suspect and which the newly formed
Alcoholics Anonymous
adapted.
And there were other criticisms as well.
From W.F. Kaynor of Waterbury, Connecticut, came the
timeless American observation made to the
Canadian Ambassador in Washington that" making full
allowances for the ingenuity of the
prisoners, the fact still remains that there are still too many escapes in
Canada and this country gets the impression
that there is incompetence somewhere."
The strongest criticism came from H. Cooke
of London, Ontario. In a strongly worded letter to
Col. Ralston, dated April 20, 1941, Cooke
not only charged those in charge with gross negligence, but
went on to say that" there is only one thing
to satisfy the people of Canada and especially exservicemen
and that is to rout out the Fifth Column
element that must be in that branch of the service....
Surely no Commander is so blind that
tunneling can be concealed and surely no guard is so blind that
28 men can get out unless there is
cooperation with those escaping from within. ... And unless something
is done to stop this nonsense your position
is going to be likened to that of a man who has not the best
interests of his country at
heart."
Pretty strong stuff, that, but the irony is
that the guards that he accuses of being a " Fifth
Column" were all ex-servicemen reactivated
as part of No. 2 Company, Veterans' Guards of Canada.
Canadian Press sent 23 year old Scott Young
to cover the story. Because of his initiatives he
was able to scoop the reporters from the
major Toronto newspapers. In his book, A WRITER'S LIFE,
Young describes what he did. Passenger
trains did not stop at Angler and there was no telegraphist
there. Instead of staying with the other
reporters in a house rented from a railroader near Angler, he
hopped a freight train and went to Heron Bay
where he rented a room on the second floor of the hotel
there. The floor of the room had a hole in
it where there might have been a stove pipe at one time. The
hole wad directly above the lounge. With his
ear to the ground so to speak, and listening to the
conversation of policemen and others
involved in the hunt, he gathered a lot of information. In addition,
Canadian Press had sent a telegraphist to
Heron Bay and so Young was able to get his stories to Toronto
and other CP outlets before the other
reporters had filed their stories. In addition, he had CP send him
several bottles of Scotch whiskey. At the
end of a long day of searching, a welcome drink was all that it
took for Young and a policeman to become
fast friends- and for Young to get inside information.
He goes on to tell how he got the
information that he filed on April 25, 1941." One night when
the main Toronto contingent had left by
train, I was awakened by a hand... that touched my shoulder.
When I looked up I saw my OPP drinking
partner beckoning me. Downstairs I caught up to him." We got
the last four", he said quietly. They're
being held in the station waiting room. Your telegrapher is there,
too."
7
This young
reporter was able to interview the prisoners, including Ackenhausen who had
made
the kayak and then write the following story
that his telegrapher sent to CP:
" Last night, (April 24), they sat hidden in
a box car for five hours and 45 minutes within shouting
distance of the police and soldiers. Several
times the guards walked past the door of the box car before
the four policemen inspected it.... The
Germans gave up without resistance. In the station later they said
that they had hidden in a hut they built
themselves on the lakeshore 10 kilometres from Heron Bay and
less than a mile from Peninsula. They told
the police they stayed in the bush for four days and had food
for ten more in blue packsacks which they
had made.... On each of the four men the police found a map
that was so finely detailed they looked as
if they had been engraved. The maps were drawn on yellow
paper commonly used for carbon copies in
business offices." Upon their arrival in Toronto the next
rhorning the other reporters were able to
read Young's story. In a memorandum to the Commissioner of
the RCMP, Col. Stethem stated that the maps
were copied from a map believed stolen from the Officers'
Mess when the prisoners were working there
without being properly guarded.
The RCMP tried to arrest Young because, by
interviewing prisoners, he had breached the
Geneva Convention. While Young and the
police were arguing, his telegrapher wired CP that Young
couldn't answer at the moment because the
RCMP had burned his notes, tried to arrest him and a guy
with a gun had chased him onto the station
platform. This made front page news and even sparked
debate in the House of Commons about the
RCMP's attempt to limit freedom of the press.
In addition to the criticisms received by
the Minister of National Defense and the Director of
Internment Operations, there were a number
of suggestions, which had they been in operation at the
time of the escape, might have saved the
lives of Loffelmeier and Miethiing. If one accepts, (and I have
serious doubts about it), the official
version of events, the two young men did not die instantly as a result
of gunshot wounds, but died from loss of
blood while being carried back to the Camp and their deaths
were primarily due to the time required to
send a runner to the Camp to get a carrying party back to the
scene of the shooting.
Lt. T.R. Reid of Internment Camp M
recommended that prison camps located in remote areas
such as Angler should establish a loft of
pigeons for rapid communication between search parties and the
Camp headquarters. The pigeons would be of
inestimable value and would provide search parties with
rapid contact with camp authorities at a
fraction of the cost of wireless equipment. Reid stated that the
cost would be less than two cents a day per
bird and that the Canadian Homing Union would donate the
required number of birds.
Thomas Hubbard of Toronto, obviously
unacquainted with the rugged terrain around Angler and
the fact that there was no highway access to
the Camp- there were no highways- suggested that a steam
shovel with a crane attached should be
brought in to dig a trench between each hut and a deep trench
y
pround the
whole Camp outside the wire to be filled with boulders.
Col. Stethem's reply pointed out one or two
difficulties with Hubbard's plan. First of all, there
were no roads and the steam shovel equipment
would have to be brought in by rail to the nearest the
siding and then somehow moved up the tote
road to the Camp. Also, there would be considerable
difficulty in hauling rocks for which
bulldozers would be required.
T.H. Hubbard made one more suggestion. In a
letter dated April 25th, 1941, his somewhat
bizarre
suggestion could be somewhat of an early
detection scheme :
" An important preliminary to escape is food
storage, hence chocolate bars by virtue of their
concentrated food value.... Tabs could be
secretly kept on sales of this type- the frequency of purchase
by one or more prisoners might be noted and
observed at periodic searchings. Also, without distortion of
the Geneva ruling it might be worthwhile to
have special shipments manufactured...containing, under
medical supervision, a cramping but harmless
medicament. Obviously, if the bars are consumed, a mild
case of cramps occurs, easily remedied by
the camp physician. But if NO cramps occur-they are being
stored ! In that case if the prisoner
effects an escape, his progress will be delayed and the results will
indicate his trail."
Is that suggestion a rather unpleasant of
the old trick of dropping bread crumbs in the forest so
that one could find his way back
?
H.E. Cooke's letter may have been overly
harsh, but he was right in charging incompetence and
inefficiency. To house battle hardened
prisoners in huts that stood on concrete pillars above a sandy
plain was courting disaster. Then to
compound this mistake by covering the space under the huts with
plywood and snow was an open invitation to
hide sand dug from the tunnels.
Table knives went missing by the dozens and
no suspicions were aroused; a map was stolen
from the Officers' Mess, copied and returned
without anyone noticing. Scores of empty tin cans were
taken for a variety of purposes: storing
meat for the escape kits; components of a ventilation pipe for the
tunnel; flattened to line Hakenhausen's
kayak. No guard seemed to notice. As the floors of the huts
began to sag as every other joist was
removed, the Canadians concluded ttjat must have been the result
of shoddy workmanship when the huts were
built. Apparently there were no surprise roll calls ; few, if any
surprise inspections and if there were,
prisoners were very skilled in hiding any evidence of a planned
escape.
Perhaps, more than anything else,
complacency was a strong factor in allowing the escape to
happerrat all. From the Camp Commandant to
all the guards, ey^ry red blooded Canadian at Camp X
"knew" that a successful escape could not
happen from the godforsaken place in the wild bush and rock
of Northern Ontario wilderness with no
roads, no possibility of crossing Lake Superior, hardly any hufnaw
habitation, and only the main line of the
C.P.R. to follow.
Northern
Ontario wilderness is slowly reclaiming unto itself the site of the camp,
gradually
covering what once was there. In similar
fashion our collective memory has all but buried what happened
at Angler in 1941. Even many of the younger
people who live in the area seem unaware of what
happened here.
But is it just our indifference to this
piece of history that accounts for the fact that there is no
historical marker on the Trans Canada
Highway to mark the spot ? Or is that we don't want to
acknowledge the ingenuity and determination
that drove our former enemies to pull off the greatest
escape of German prisoners of war in Canada
in World War 11 ? Or is it something darker- that we don't
want to be reminded that the sequel to that
mass escape on April 18th, 1941, led to the killing of
two
young Germans, the cruel way in which
Broderix' wound was treated or the killing of Martin Mueller a few
weeks later by two drunken guards
?
From Research done by Emerson
Lavender
