On the 1st April 1945 Austrian Prisoner of War Joseph Kirchdorfer, aged nineteen, and seven others escaped from Camp 18 at Featherstone Park, near Haltwhistle. The daring plot had been planned over months by the eight escapees, but would end swiftly in recapture and death.
Camp 18, Featherstone Park near Haltwhistle was opened in 1944 to house American soldiers arriving as part of the Normandy invasions and later became one of the largest POW camps in Britain, with two hundred huts over four compounds that could house up to four thousand officers and six hundred German orderlies. The camp held a broad range of prisoners from the German Army, Navy, U-boat Officers and Luftwaffe pilots, as well as diplomats and bureaucrats were represented amongst the camps growing population in the mid to late 1940s.
Camp 18 ran programmes of ‘denazification’ in the hope that when German POWs returned to Germany they would have been re-educated along democratic lines. POWs were often screened to assess their ideological sympathies. They were then placed into three groups: ‘white’ (anti-Nazi), ‘grey’ (in-between), and ‘black’ (hardline Nazi). ‘Black Nazis’ were often sent to Camp 18 for re-education. The ‘denazification’ programs at the camp were considered to be a huge success and towards the end of the 1940s prisoners were allowed to undertake work in the local community. Maureen Smith remembers German POWs being allowed to attend the village dance on a Saturday night. She recalls one man, ‘Peter, a German prisoner, [who] used to work on the fields near [their] allotment’ and if it was raining he would sit in their shed and eat his sandwiches. The POWs of Camp 18 also produced their own German newspaper ‘Die Zeit am Tyne’ that was printed on the presses of the the Hexham Courant. The Northumberland Archives hold original copies along with some transcriptions of issues one to six of the newspaper. Alongside the German newspaper and community work, prisoners in the Camp also held stage plays, radio broadcasts and football matches.
Joseph Kirchdorfer, a Luftwaffe pilot, was determined to escape Camp 18. In his memoirs he claims that the escape was born out of a youthful urge for action, rather than any sort of heroics. He had been arrested behind enemy lines in Holland in 1944. He was of special interest to his captors as he carried with him a letter from the world’s first female test pilot, Hanna Reitsch. Soon after arriving at Featherstone Park, Joseph became involved in a daring plot to escape the camp, hijack a plane and return to Germany. The young officer was well aware of the risks involved with an escape attempt; later writing in his memoirs that if the search light was switched on ‘you were a dead man’.
In the dead of night, using a thunderstorm for cover, Joseph and seven of his compatriots, dressed in make-shift outfits and using wire cutters fashioned out of a window latch, fled the camp. The men said their goodbyes at the fence and headed in their separate ways. Some of the men attempted to cross the South River Tyne that had become flooded in the thunderstorm. One POW, 24-year-old Karl Kropp, was last seen up to his neck in water, attempting to wade across the flooded river. His body was recovered by John Walton, who was out on a shooting trip, as the waters receded three days later. He was buried in the war graves section of Hexham cemetery, draped in a swastika flag and escorted by six German POWs who saluted as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Kropp’s body was disinterred and repatriated to Germany in 1958.
Joseph and two other escapees in his group followed the South Tyne Railway to Alston. The group hid out in a guardsman’s hut during the day and continued their journey as darkness set. The three men travelled 12 miles in one day and made it into Cumbria. Their escape was ended by a local policeman, PC Wilson, who stopped the group and reported them to soldiers. PC Wilson also arrested four of the surviving POWs in Haldon’s Mill, outside of Alston. Recaptured and returned to the Camp, Joseph was stripped naked and beaten by guards determined to locate the remaining escapees. After refusing to give up the names and locations of his fellow escapees, guards
Joseph and his fellow POWs escape attempt had ended in catastrophe. All at the men were recaptured and Karl Kropp paid for the attempt with his life.
Thank you to Derek Holcroft for suppling the colour images of a soggy Featherstone and also giving us the original idea for this story.
