The Password is Courage

By John Castle

The man who broke into Auschwitz. When he was captured in France in 1940 Sergeant-Major Charles Coward launched his own private war against the Germans (although he was being held as a prisoner-of-war). For several years he was the most incredible amateur espionage and sabotage agent of World War Two, opposing the Nazis while sending back vital information to England. He escaped from captivity nine times and was, eventually, sent to Auschwitz III (a labour camp just five miles from Auschwitz II, the extermination camp). He carried guns and dynamite for the Polish underground movement, traded in dead bodies (by swapping the corpses of dead prisoners for Jewish prisoners, allowing the prisoners to escape) and, finally, he smuggled himself into Auschwitz where he witnessed the full horrors of the extermination camp. This is one of the most heroic and extraordinary stories of World War Two. Charles Coward fought the might of the Nazi army and won, his courage is testament to the indomitable human spirit facing overwhelming odds. At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials Coward's testimony was sensational, allowing over 2,000 Auschwitz survivors to file lawsuits for compensations against their former oppressors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Souvenir Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780285642287

John Castle

John Castle was a pseudonym used by two English writers. Together they wrote a series of bestselling books, including ‘The Password is Courage’.

Book preview

1

Again, he looked at his watch, holding it close to his eyes until the hands were just discernible in the faint light from the window.

Outside, it seemed, lay a vast sea of nothingness, a whole world wrapped in a cold and brooding silence. A damp grey mist swirled slowly off the marshes, huddling the little white houses of Stadt-Bau yet closer together, weaving the wood mill’s rotting hulk into strange and moving shapes, and masking the rusted barbed wire of the compound behind it. There was a movement as a sentry stamped the rawness from his feet; a cough; then silence.

The man at the window listened intently. No sound came from the room above him: evidently the Wehrmacht were sleeping well after their evening wine. The watch hands crept to one o’clock exactly. He waited a moment longer; then knocked lightly on the floor, once.

In a black, evil-smelling washroom below him, fifteen British soldiers nudged each other and tensed for action. Two of them felt their way on to the rough wooden sink and heaved at the concrete slab roof. With a sudden creak it yielded as the joints in the brickwork, previously chipped loose, broke away. Quickly it was levered back and wooden staves fitted to prop it open. One by one, without a word, the fifteen men hoisted themselves up, scrambled out, and dropped on to the grass outside.

It was the work of a minute, but to the man above it seemed an age. He watched the men dash forward until the mist swallowed them, and imagined them pressed to the ground before the sentry returned on his beat.

They should now be at the place where the perimeter wire had been loosened. Forcing himself to be quite still, he counted the seconds, sharing with the men outside the almost unbearable strain of inactivity. This was the crucial point, the knife-edge of freedom or disaster, when success and perhaps even lives hung on the accuracy of his timetable, the result of weeks of lonely observation and plotting of the guards’ movements. This was the moment when everyone in the band of helpers – the document forgers, the compass makers, the map draughtsmen, the tailors, the men who fashioned incredible tools from old tins, those who had kept watch and those who had contributed rations – waited in the dark anonymity of their bunks and steeled themselves for the blasting crack of rifle-shot, the shouts, the clump of boots and crashing of doors that meant failure.

At the window of his room, with an instant release of tension, he had counted the guard passing twice, and still no sound. They had made it. Fifteen away, now separating into their pre-arranged singles and pairs; if the wire had been replaced as carefully as he had instructed them, discovery of the break with all its uproar might not come till morning.

He was smiling as he climbed back into bed, chilled through but happy. If he could have spoken to the men stumbling over the fields it would have been ‘Good luck, blokes. Keep your nuts down.’ But they knew it. If any of them managed the unlikely journey to England they would be sure to visit a house in Lower Edmonton, London, and say with a grin, ‘Hello, Mrs Coward. Charlie sends all his love, and to tell you that he’ll be over soon.’

It was a grim but cheerful place, the London of most prisoners’ dreams and hopes. A place of holes where homes had been, a place of rubble and smashed glass, of smoke and uniforms and ‘lunch-box’ gas masks. But it was a place too of humour and astonishing resilience, where the Tube trains still clattered underground and the bright red buses still grunted along with their loads; where a cup of tea on a splintered table could still restore the nerve and repair the spirit. London was different: a great advance post of war, polyglot and confusing, meeting demands that were always changing. Yet in some miraculous way London was the same as it had always been, and on that sameness rested the strength of the free world.

Along those partly shattered streets and past corner shops now boarded up or displaying impudent signs, Charles Coward had once played as a boy, drawing from the sooty breath of London a defiant self-sufficiency. For him, as for most Cockneys, manhood had come quickly: there was so little time or opportunity to taste the luxury of growing up. To a sturdy, healthy youngster, enlistment in the Army appealed as a splendid way in which to spread one’s wings; by 1924 he had completed a tour of service in India and returned to take up the threads of civilian life.

It was not easy, in fact for a young man filled with restless energy and a quick intelligence, a man who had seen a little of the world beyond his own confining streets, the frustrations of everyday life were at first difficult to accept. Before very long he had thrown up his job to start business on his own, managing a small shop, but the speedy accumulation of bad debts defeated the venture. In his spare time from work he found release and expression in organizing dances and concerts for a number of charities; the stage and the chance it gave to project himself, proved an irresistible attraction. Producing amateur talent contests, directing plays, composing songs, always doing something to entertain, brought satisfaction and a sense of achievement not possible in any other way. Because he so obviously enjoyed himself, he pleased his audiences.

Nevertheless, the Army was not forgotten. He took an active part in the territorial unit of the company employing him, and so, when in the fateful summer of 1939 it became urgent almost overnight to muster every available soldier, he was amongst the first to be called into full service. Back in his old regiment, the Royal Artillery, he instructed for some months at a camp in Hereford, chafing under the boring conditions and being, one suspects, a good deal more easy-going with the trainees than instructors are generally supposed to be. Some of the friendships he formed then last to the present day, for when the time came for him to say goodbye to his lads he asked to be posted with them to France. Somewhat to his surprise, the request was granted. Surprise, because of the Services’ uncanny ability to send a man to where he would rather not go, and to ignore his own personal preferences, especially in wartime. However, Coward was lucky. He would say that he has always been lucky.

So it was that when Hitler launched his big attack in the spring of 1940, Coward was alongside the men he had helped to train, the sergeant-major of a battery fighting a desperate rearguard action and suffering heavy casualties.

They had reached the outskirts of Calais one morning when a burst of small-arms fire sent Coward and some of his men diving into a café from where they could use their rifles. Several hours passed, during which he received a wound in the leg and another in the head whilst doubling across the road to report to his officer. Then, taking advantage of a lull, he attempted to review the position. It was far from comfortable. The Germans were between them and the port of Calais, and to try to fight their way through such a concentration was clearly an impossibility. Wearily he pondered on the next move to make; but the decision was taken out of his hands. Bouncing into the café came a hand grenade, and within two seconds it was all over. For the Germans who followed, those of the Britishers who were still alive, stunned and momentarily helpless, were an easy capture.

Coward’s prisoner-of-war career had begun: a career that was to make him a principal trouble-maker for the Hun and to transform him from an ordinary ebullient Cockney into an extraordinary amateur espionage agent. A thousand men taken prisoner would learn gradually to accept the inevitable; they would attempt an escape, fail, and then decide quite logically that the scales were weighted too heavily against them. Coward could never do that. Some inborn stubbornness compelled him to dig in his toes, refuse to give up. From now on the war was for him a personal affair and a challenge to his wits.

Even as the German soldiers burst into the café, waving their guns in the faces of the dazed survivors, his one thought was to escape.

All the prisoners from that section of the town assembled into a long line, yet another column to begin the trek to Germany. At first a march was an almost enjoyable relief, but after two or three hours reaction brought a deadly fatigue; at the end of eight hours the exhaustion was crushing. The men were given neither food nor water. If any dropped out of line they risked being summarily despatched with a bullet. The Germans, flushed with victory, had no time to waste on wounded prisoners at that stage of the war. One marched until the order came at last to halt. Then everyone slept until morning light, when it was time to form up again.

When two days had passed without food, Coward began to get a little light-headed and somewhat annoyed. The head wound seemed to affect his spine, which ached and gritted with every step, and the gash in his leg painfully obstructed movement. ‘Much more of this and I’ll have had it,’ he thought. ‘Somehow, I’ve got to get away.’ And he did, that same night.

The column had stopped for sleep, the men slumping down anywhere in collapse, their bodies covering the grass verge of the road and lining the sides of a ditch. Cautiously, Coward looked round at the guards. They had obviously relaxed, hardly expecting any of their utterly spent charges to be capable of escape, and were talking and laughing together in a group. He ripped off the conspicuous bandage from his head, rolled down into the mud of the ditch, and began to wriggle slowly away from the crowds of prostrate men. He passed within feet of the chattering Germans, not daring to emerge until he was well out of sight and earshot. Crawling with difficulty, stopping frequently to regain his strength, he made his way across a stubble field to where the silhouette of a farmhouse cut into the night sky. A hasty reconnaissance revealed the friendly shape of a haystack; with a final effort he clambered up its side, burrowed himself into its softness, and fell asleep.

He remembered no more until warm sunshine awoke him. Scarecely knowing where he was or what had happened, he lay for a little while listening to the unaccustomed sound of hens clucking and the measured clop-clop of a horse’s hooves on gravel. They held no meaning for him. Beneath his eyelids the world receded to a pin point, a white speck dancing to the rumble of distant engines. Converging shafts of light stabbed at the speck, always missing it but somehow impinging on a voice speaking faintly and unintelligibly from the uttermost reaches of consciousness. With a start, like an animal that has smelt danger, he raised himself on an elbow and opened his eyes, screwing them up against the brightness of the morning. Stiffly he swung his legs over and slithered down the side of the stack, landing with a jar that sent him sprawling on the ground.

His mind did not question the fact that hands other than his own were helping him to his feet. Before him stood an elderly woman, her eyes dilated in shock and fear. As best he could, he conveyed to her what he was, and in a few minutes was once more sitting on the hay, this time consuming with the hunger of a wolf a hunk of bread and bottle of coarse red wine brought him from the farmhouse. Immediately he felt better. He regarded almost with benevolence the friendly scene about him and was slow to realize that the kindly Frenchwoman, beside herself in agitation, was motioning him back to the top of the stack.

He made it just as the accelerating roar of motor-cycles sent the hens scurrying for safety, and in another moment the yard echoed to the bedlam of engines and guttural commands. There was nothing he could do, he told himself, but to wait and to rest. The brief meal was already having its effect and very soon he was sleeping soundly.

So soundly that an excruciatingly loud noise almost in his ear did not rouse him for a moment. But when it did, he recoiled in alarm. A large dog had jumped up beside him and was snarling and barking practically in his face. In vain he made some attempt to quieten the brute. The barking increased, German voices called to the dog from below him, then a bayonet began to prod up into the hay.

When the soldier with the bayonet saw what he had flushed out, he was speechless for a moment. Not so Coward, however, who expressed in a few terse and succinct phrases of Anglo-Saxon origin his extreme distaste of the whole proceeding.

His annoyance increased when the excited soldiers surrounded him, bellowing with laughter. It came to him then what an extraordinary apparition he was, tattered, literally covered with mud and grime, hair matted with blood and bits of hay. The humour of it appealed to him and he joined in the merriment until a light tap from a rifle restored the status quo. Then he sobered up and paid some attention to the questions addressed him by the Unteroffizier. A curious exchange followed, with neither side having better than the sketchiest notion of what the other was saying, but at length Coward gathered that he was being asked if there was anything he would like. Nothing at that moment seemed more desirable than a wash and as soon as the Germans had grasped this there were nods and grins.

With a flourish the Unteroffizier led the way to a large cattle trough and gestured Coward to refresh himself. The dirty water was something less than appealing, but at least it would remove some of his grime and perhaps he could bathe his wounds. He was about to plunge in his hands when a chuckle from one of the soldiers made him straighten up suspiciously.

‘What’s coming off here?’ he demanded.

A sharp blow caught him in the back, someone gripped him round the waist, and with a great splash he was in the trough. It was bitterly cold. To the accompaniment of shouts of laughter, he tried to find a firm hand-hold on the wet surface only to be thrust under again, kicking and spluttering and gasping for breath. The entertainment appeared likely to continue indefinitely; then Coward was aware that all was quiet and he could pull himself upright. Fixing him with a humourless stare as he sat in the water was a German officer. Coward’s glower was by now humourless too.

‘Go on, split your bloody sides,’ he told him.

If the officer understood, he did not answer. Giving a curt order, he had Coward hauled as unceremoniously out of the tank as he had been dumped in. The treatment was not calculated to dispel Coward’s truculence and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he restrained himself from registering his feelings in a more violent way. It was not long before he was put astride the pillion of a motor-cycle and driven by a grinning German at breakneck speed to the nearest marshalling point of prisoners-of-war.

The spectacle he presented there, soaked through and shivering, was for the dejected Tommies a sight for sore eyes. Yet again there were hoots of laughter.

‘Christ, it must be bath day!’

‘Did a U-boat get you, sir?’

‘Good thing his missus can’t see her hero now!’

If Mrs Coward could have seen her husband in his present state, perhaps even her concern for him would not have prevented a smile. Who could foretell that this bedraggled specimen, standing miserably rebuffing the merriment of his comrades while water dripped on his boots, was a born escaper and an incredibly astute patriot, a man to be known in the course of time as the Count of Auschwitz and who, not content with tormenting the Germans for five long years, was to return even after the war and face them as an important witness in their own criminal trials?

2

Soon after rejoining the column of marching prisoners, Coward began to suffer horribly. Perhaps the splinter of steel embedded in the muscle of his thigh had injured a nerve for the pain in his spine had become acute and before long a paralysis started to spread over the lower half of his body. In desperation he managed to drag himself along, well knowing the consequences of dropping out of line. The column struggled on, ever slower, yet somehow covering mile after weary mile. Jokes were fewer now, each man intent on keeping up with the plodding boots in front of him, but those nearest Coward helped him as best they could. But the morning arrived when he found it impossible to stand by himself, and he knew then that the end had come.

Still he would not give in. They had spent the night in a huge barn just inside the German border, and when the men were ordered outside to prepare for another day’s march he rolled aside to a corner in which hay had been stacked and contrived to cover himself with a bale. The guards neglected to give more than a cursory glance round the barn’s malodorous interior; they were almost as tired as the prisoners, though presumably not so hungry, and in a few minutes they had set the column on its way and its sound was growing gradually more distant.

Coward moved himself and tried to sleep. It was a forlorn hope. The pain of his wounds and the worry that he should do something to make his position more secure, made sleep unthinkable. To remain where he was would be highly dangerous, yet the slightest effort increased his misery. To think coherently was difficult; it was easier by far to let his thoughts slip into fantasy, those waking dreams that are every prisoner’s inward sustenance, a secret cache of hope and solace, sealing the mind from the hurts and restraints of the present. In this withdrawal the act of reliving becomes a creative force in itself, investing scenes and atmospheres with a value made tangible for the first time. The indignities of the other life, the personal failures and unending compromise, are lost in an enveloping haze of unreality; only the pleasurable, and the single selected torment, remain distinct. From the well of his own experience, each man draws what to him is consoling, fingering the memories with an obsessional intentness, constantly turning them over and examining them afresh. Drifting back to him come echoes of half-remembered situations, their conversational fragments now full of meaning; from these he will take only certain incidents, charge them with new significance, and continually refurbish them until they alone occupy his mind and their context has entirely gone. What might have been merges inexorably with what was, spreading like the tendrils of a dissolving dye until each is coloured and conditioned by the other.

Coward, as did many thousands of his fellows, was to know this process very well. Now, as he lay helpless, his pain relieved a little by a slight delirium, one picture seemed to fill the barn. It was of home. And wintertime. A fire crackled a cheery invitation, lighting with its glow the ineffable comforts of slippers and arm-chair moulded to his body, of a table set for evening meal, of a glass of water. The voice from the kitchen would call in a moment … only the moment would stretch for ever.

There were sounds of activity, the whine of a truck bumping in low gear over the rutted field outside. It was dusk and he peered into the shadows, trying to make out the uniforms of several men who presently entered the barn bearing stretchers. A dozen or more casualties were laid on the ground, two or three of them carefully lighting cigarettes and talking quietly in German. The more seriously wounded were lowered gently on to the hay and lay there groaning or in silence. The air began to reek of iodoform and dried blood.

In spite of his discomfort, Coward could hardly suppress a rather bitter smile. He knew he must be urgently in need of medical attention, but the last few days had shown that little compassion could be expected from the enemy. Yet the German army had always enjoyed a reputation for fair treatment in the first world war. Was their present indiscriminate butchery of all who stood in their way merely the lusting of a madly advancing army not yet under proper control, or had Hitler bred a new type of fighter impervious to any international rules or decencies?

Coward chose to believe the former theory. A man who had himself seen regular service in India, indiscipline was in his eyes a weakness more lethal to an army than high explosive; yet he told himself that the soldiers lying about him were men such as he was, sharing the same human failings and wrenched from their families for the same reasons. Between professional soldiers there exists a bond of respect that politicians cannot reach. Or did. Later on some of Coward’s ideas were to change, as he saw at first hand the horrors that can be inflicted in the name of nationalism. At the moment he felt he had little to lose and a plan formed in his mind which appealed to his never-failing Cockney humour.

Laboriously, once darkness was complete, he edged himself over to the nearest man, who appeared to be unconscious, and lay beside him. A number of blankets had been distributed round, and one of these he pulled over himself. His guess was right; eventually, by the dim light of lanterns, food was brought in. Eagerly he received his ration, gulping down the coarse bread and sausage as gratefully as if it were the choicest fish and chips from his favourite shop at home. Indeed, it may well have been, for his fevered imagination was once again in London, and the night passed in fitful dreams.

With the daylight came the medical orderlies. They lifted the wounded back on to the stretchers and Coward found himself being carried out into bright sunshine and pushed aboard a large open truck. There were five of these, and the drive in convoy was as rough and alarming as any given Coward by a sea-side roller coaster in peacetime. For several hours they lurched along, sliding the stretchers from side to side, and with his face to the sky he could gain no idea of their direction.

It must have been afternoon before the trucks swung into a forecourt and stopped. A chatter of voices followed and Coward had his first experience of the much-vaunted German efficiency that seemed to entail endless discussion before even the simplest operation was performed. Then gentler hands lifted him out and German male nurses bore him quickly into what was evidently a civilian hospital of considerable size. As they traversed the startlingly clean and disinfected corridors it was increasingly clear that it was in use as a base hospital for the fighting fronts. Only servicemen were to be seen, one or two of them giving him a casual glance as he passed by.

His two bearers reached a large ward, stepping carefully over the polished floor, and deposited him on a bed. Removing his boots, but not attempting to take off his clothes, they threw a blanket over the one he still clutched, and left.

‘What now?’ thought Coward.

On either side of him and opposite were beds, some of whose occupants seemed not long for this world, several of them with limbs suspended in various forms of traction. Within a few minutes his immediate neighbour began to address him, asking a question. Coward stared back, hoping he gave the impression of shell-shock. It apparently succeeded, for the man put a cigarette in his hand and offered him a light. Coward drew the smoke into his lungs with relief and grinned in thanks at the German, wondering anxiously if his khaki-clad arm had been noticed as it emerged to take the cigarette. No, all was well; his benefactor was calling out to other patients and pointing to Coward’s head. They looked at him commiseratingly, those who could move at all, then returned to the contemplation of their own misfortunes.

After an hour or so a white-coated orderly came up and stood beside the bed. He produced a printed form and pencil. Coward held his breath.

‘Der Name bitte?’

This was clear even to one who did not speak the chosen tongue, but Coward decided not to push his luck too far. He