I was a fugitive from the Gestapo

(Joseph Kenny's own account of his evasion)
(Photo & article courtesy of Mark Kenny)

We were flying home at low level, with our port inner engine blasted out of action by flak and our Australian rear-gunner dead in his turret after an attack by two night-fighters. "Are we over the Ardennes yet?” asked the pilot. "Yes," replied our navigator. "Cloud cover dead ahead" reported the bomb-aimer, and we all breathed a sigh of relief; cloud meant safety. Or so we thought. At 230 miles an hour, the Lancaster flew into the "cloud" - and drove full tilt into a mist-shrouded hill-top. Although I knew the rear gunner was dead, my first thought on getting out was to see whether he and the rear turret were still there. But the stern of the aircraft had gone - broken off, I suppose, at some time during the crash.

We all foregathered, got our escape material ready and then set about destroying what was left of the Lancaster with "limpet" incendiary bombs which we carried for such an emergency. We decided to separate and go our own ways to the nearest town - Bastogne in Luxembourg. We travelled on foot all night along the main road. Once a German fire engine went roaring by towards where we had left the burning aircraft, and we hid in the ditch. In case we were picked up and searched, we turned out our pockets to get rid of everthing which might help the enemy. What hurt me most of all was to have to burn six brand-new £1 notes!

We carried on until dawn when, to our amazement, we saw two of our colleagues climbing over a wall in front of us, so we rejoined them and decided to go on together to Bastogne. On the outskirts we came up to a cafe, behind which we saw a man washing himself. He took us to a shed and brought us a drink of lemonade. We had a rest there and then an hour later he took us to a gamekeeper's house on a big estate nearby. The landowner and his wife came down from the big house to see us there. With them they brought a horse-doctor carrying a foot-long hypodermic syringe! We received anti-tetanus injections and had our injuries fixed up by him.

Next day a British agent nearby led us deep into the Ardennes Forest to a woodman's hut, where we were to stay on our own until the hue and cry had died down. He impressed on us that we were to light no fires by day, and that we must cook at night only. Giving us a sack of potatoes and a side of bacon, he left us to our own devices. We set up a guard rota and settled down to make the best of things there. We had no bedding, so we raided a nearby cornfield for stooks of standing corn to sleep upon. We soon discovered that the Forest around also harboured a large party of Belgian youths “living rough" like ourselves. These were part of the Belgian Resistance, or "Armée Blanche," which was hiding from the Germans in the woods. These lads used to raid German trains for arms and food, and made us very welcome.

The British agent, whom we knew as "Captain Max," turned up after a few days. We were to go to a nearby town called Libramont, make our way to the station and wait by the booking office until we saw a woman blowing her nose loudly on a large white handkerchief. When we saw her, we were to get on the train and get off again at Brussels, where we would see a second woman doing exactly the same thing outside the booking office. We were told that she would take care of us.

Once at Brussels, we followed the woman down the main streets which were full of German troops on leave, until we came to the house of “Madame X." Here we were given French and Belgian identity cards and a change of clothes. For our photographs for the identity cards, we had to go to the big Bon Marché stores in Brussels, where they had an automatic photographing machine. In front of the machine there was a long queue, made up mainly of German soldiers intent on getting their pictures taken to send home to their girl friends. Nevertheless we took our places in the queue, although I found myself next to a German sergeant. We soon discovered that next door to the house of “Madame X" was the German General Headquarters for Belgium and Northern France, and one of the great moments of our day consisted of watching the changing of the guard every night outside our window.

We stayed fourteen days in Brussels and then moved to Paris where we were split up and passed on to a different branch of the Resistance. The flight engineer, Jim Gillman, and I were handed over to our new protectors in Montmartre, actually inside the church of Sacré-Cœur, before being taken to our new hide-out in a brothel! I should add here that we saw very little of the social life of the household.

From now on we had to wait for a move. We heard once that an airlift was due and went to Rheims to await it, but after fourteen fruitless nights we went back to Paris, Some tune later we went to Rheims again but were equally unsuccessful.

For a while we stayed on at a very well-kept farmhouse, where we worked in the orchard for 5 days - I remember that I picked twenty bags of cider apples a day for the farmer. Then once again we received a message on the radio. This time that an agent "Pierre" was to be dropped. Sure enough we met him at a cafe in Fismes and went with him back to the Paris suburb of Passy to a different house where I stayed with Monique and her family.

We felt that we must move lest we put our friends in mortal danger from the Germans. Finally, after spending Christmas in the Paris suburbs, we managed to get money and train tickets in the middle of February, 1944, and moved south to Bordeaux.

Someone, alas, had played a double game. Foolishly we had taken a non-stop train from Bordeaux south to Pau in the Pyrenees, and while we were standing in the corridor, Gestapo men suddenly appeared at either end, shouting at us and brandishing revolvers. There and then they stripped us naked where we stood and marched us off at pistol point back to the German part of the train. They put us, naked as we were, in a compartment with some Luftwaffe men and some "Luftwaffe Mädchen” in it: everyone seemed very interested in us.

We were taken off the train at Dax and driven to Gestapo headquarters at Biarritz. There, stripped to the waist, we were made to stand to attention for eighteen hours in front of a large full-length mirror without moving. My colleague, Jim Gillman, during this ordeal, asked if he could leave the room." The reply was a blow on the head.

After one night at Biarritz, we were taken to gaol in Bayonne where the Gestapo played "cat and mouse” with us. We had a saw blade apiece hidden in our lapels, and when left alone began to saw through the bars, using margarine from our food to grease the saw edge. We soon had two bars sawn almost through when, without explanation we were moved to another cell where exactly the same thing happened. So we realised that we were being played with and gave up our attempt to escape.

Our next move was back to Paris, where we were taken, chained hand and foot, to Fresnes Prison. Our first twenty-four hours there were almost unendurable. Jim and I spent that time together in a small dark cubicle the size of a sentry box, in which we couldn't even sit down. Next day we were marched along a subterranean tunnel to a cell which had no light, no windows, and no beds - but plenty of water on the floor - where we were left in chains. The following day we were given some coffee, but when Gillman asked the guard for some food the latter threw the coffee at him. Soon, however we were put in proper cells which we found quite comfortable after our previous experience. Jim and I were in adjoining cells and found that we could carry on conversation quite easily. As we were talking one day, a voice from a cell in the block opposite our own called out "Are you English?” and after we had made sure that he was not a “plant” we talked at length to our fellow prisoner. He turned out to be Wing-Commander Yeo-Thomas, G.C., M.C., the author of The White Rabbit. Yeo-Thomas was in a much worse fix than we were: the Gestapo tortured him daily, while all we got was an occasional kick.

Easter came and went and then, after we had spent three weeks in the Gestapo prison at Frankfurt, the Gestapo decided to wash their hands of us and on 25th May handed us over to the Luftwaffe prisoner-of-war organisation. We went successively to an air force prison camp in East Prussia, to a camp in the Polish Corridor, and finally to Hanover, on the way to which Jim and I got away for two hours before we were recaptured.
At our camp, near Hanover, I fell sick with appendicitis and since no facilities were available at our camp, the Germans took me to a nearby Stalag for an operation by a Jugo-Slav surgeon, who was reputed to be King Peter's private doctor. Life at this latter camp was horribly sordid. They were without supplies or medical aid, and I was operated on without an anaesthetic. The Jugo-Slav gave me a good dose of schnapps and then got his friends to strap me to a table and hold me down while he performed the operation. The worst pain came afterwards; the hospital was lousy and I suffered agonies from the lice that crawled continually over the dressing which consisted of paper.

In April, 1945, the day to which I had looked forward for so long arrived, when No. 11 Squadron of the 11th Hussars (11th Armoured Division) liberated us. I was taken back to England, and after a spell at Cosford Hospital, was allowed to go home again.

For the record, my weight before my imprisonment was nearly fourteen stone; after it I weighed nine stone.