“Our duty was to try to escape, and I kept at it up to early 1945.”- Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Norman Moir
The Confines of Colditz Castle
Earlier this year, The Tank Museum received a donation relating to Lieutenant Colonel Douglas ‘Douggie’ Norman Moir, who was a Prisoner of War (POW) at the infamous POW camp at Colditz Castle in Saxony, Germany, during the Second World War. The items provide a fantastic insight into what life was like for POWs who were desperate to escape their capture.
As a Lieutenant with the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment (3 RTR), Douggie was captured by German forces when his tank was destroyed during the siege of Calais on 25 May 1940. The regiment had been rushed into action without adequate supplies or preparation, but were able to hold the port for three invaluable days while over three hundred thousand troops were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. At a cost, a large majority of 3RTR were killed or captured.
For those of you who have seen the TV series ‘Colditz’ or played the game ‘Escape from Colditz’, it was considered an officer’s duty to try to escape, and that is exactly what Douggie relentlessly attempted to do during his time in captivity. He was one of the sixty-five officers known as the ‘Eichstatt mob’ who broke out of Eichstatt POW camp in 1943. Over several months, they had dug a tunnel from under a latrine in the camp to a neighbouring local’s chicken coup thirty metres away. Unfortunately, the escape was short-lived, and all sixty-five men were recaptured. They were sent to Colditz Castle, where Douggie arrived on 30 June 1943.
Colditz Castle, otherwise known as Oflag IV-C, was a camp designated for officers known to be prolific escapers from other camps. Situated atop a hill on the outskirts of Colditz town, Oflag IV-C was supposedly ‘escape-proof.’ The castle had two-metre-thick walls and was four hundred miles away from any frontier not controlled by Nazi Germany. Roll call was held four times a day, as opposed to the usual two, and there were more guards than prisoners.
Compared to other camps, Douggie found Colditz particularly small and confining. He attempted to escape numerous times. On one occasion, he recalls having to strip down to his underwear in the middle of winter to fit through an escape tunnel dug by the Polish POWs. It was so close to the German quarters that he could hear the water coming down the pipes from the bathroom! Unfortunately, he was caught by German guards in the middle of the tunnel and sent to solitary confinement. Despite various such attempts, he never successfully escaped.
Aids to escape
A fascinating aspect of the donation is Douggie’s ‘escape kit,’ which would have aided him upon the event of a successful breakout. The items include a forged ID and travel pass, and a hand drawn escape map. Most POWs would possess similar prohibited items, which they would hide inside inconspicuous items such as books or playing cards to avoid detection by German guards.
Forgery was a prolific business within POW camps. Once an officer had escaped, he would need these documents to use public transport, pass checkpoints and cross borders to get to safety, whether that was back to his regiment, or home. Those prisoners with specific creative abilities were invaluable to the creation of realistic forgery. A sort of production line was established where one might be responsible for signatures, another for creating stamps, developing photographs and so on.
Here, you can see the forged ID and travel pass made for Douggie. His photograph was taken inside the camp, using a homemade camera. These make-shift cameras were often made from bits of wood and someone’s old glasses but were surprisingly effective. In Colditz, a typewriter was constructed from wood and wire to print text onto the papers, and the stamp of the German Army was carved with a blade from the heel of a shoe to add the crucial finishing touch.
Inside the mind of a POW
The donation also included a series of letters Douggie sent to his sister, Thea, whilst he was a POW. The letters span from April 1942 to November 1944 and provide a great insight into Douggie’s personality and the emotions he experienced during his time in captivity. The letters are often witty and funny but also detail the low points of life in a POW camp.
Being an escape-minded individual, Douggie was no stranger to solitary confinement, where prisoners were sent for defying orders or attempting escape. In one of his letters from 30 November 1943, he writes that he is becoming ‘quite a connoisseur’ of the jail cells in the castle. He jokes that it is an ‘amazingly good cell I have got here, all modern conveniences. In fact it is the best I have been in yet.’ In later years, Douggie confessed that whilst some prisoners took some comfort in the privacy afforded by solitary confinement, he was rather unfond of the conditions.
Despite his often-humorous nature, we see glimpses of Douggie’s exasperation at his capture in later letters.
On the 28 May 1944 he writes to Thea, ‘tell Churchill to hurry up with the b-invasion for god’s sake, I am now in my 5th year.’ Later in the year he then writes ‘I have had this bloody existence…been rather trying recently.’
Whilst the wait was not over yet, it was on the horizon. Colditz Castle was finally liberated on 16 April 1945 by the United States Army. Douggie watched from the window of the castle as Allied aircraft soared overhead and a tank battle raged in the distance. He described it as a ‘marvellous thing’ when the US soldiers entered the gates of the camp and ended the occupation. Within 3 days he was on his way home, and his five long years as a POW were over at last. Douggie continued serving with the Royal Tank Regiment until 1968, retaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Donated items from Douggie’s collection are currently on display in our Collections Up Close case in the Orientation Zone of the Museum. We use this case to spotlight new accessions to our collection and to commemorate anniversaries.
