HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Eric Williams (13 July 1911 – 24 December 1983) was an English writer and former
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
RAF pilot and
prisoner of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
(POW) who wrote several books dealing with his escapes from
prisoner-of-war camp A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as Prisoner of war, prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, inte ...
s, most famously in his 1949 novel ''The Wooden Horse'', made into a 1950 movie of the same name.


Early life

Eric Williams was born on 13 July 1911, and was educated at
Christ's College, Finchley Christ's College is a secondary school with academy status in East Finchley, London, United Kingdom. It falls under the London Borough of Barnet Local Education Authority for admissions. Since September 2018, Christ’s College Finchley has off ...
. In 1940, he joined the
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...
.


Capture

RAF Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams was the navigator of a 75 Squadron
Short Stirling The Short Stirling was a British four-engined heavy bomber of the Second World War. It has the distinction of being the first four-engined bomber to be introduced into service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the war (the earlier Handley ...
bomber (BK620) shot down on a bombing raid over Germany on 17/18 December 1942. He evaded capture for three days, but was eventually caught and sent to
Oflag XXI-B Oflag XXI-B and Stalag XXI-B were World War II German prisoner-of-war camps for officers and enlisted men, located at Szubin a few miles southwest of Bydgoszcz, Poland, which at that time was occupied by Nazi Germany. Timeline * September ...
at
Szubin Szubin () is a town in Nakło County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, located southwest of Bydgoszcz. It has a population of around 9,333 (as of 2010). It is located on the Gąsawka River in the ethnocultural region of Pałuki. A small ...
in
German-occupied Poland German-occupied Poland can refer to: * General Government * Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany * Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) * Prussian Partition The Prussian Partition (), or Prussian Poland, is the former territories of the Polish� ...
. There he quickly formed a friendship with Lieutenant Michael Codner, who spoke French, and together they planned and executed an escape through a tunnel. However, they were quickly recaptured and, as punishment, sent to
Stalag Luft III Stalag Luft III (; literally "Main Camp, Air, III"; SL III) was a ''Luftwaffe''-run prisoner-of-war (POW) camp during the Second World War, which held captured Western Allied air force personnel. The camp was established in March 1942 near th ...
in Sagan (now
Żagań Żagań (French language, French and , ) is a town in western Poland, on the Bóbr river, with 25,731 inhabitants (2019), capital of Żagań County in the Lubusz Voivodeship, located in the historic region of Lower Silesia. Founded in the 12th ce ...
in Poland).


The "Wooden Horse" and escape

As described in his novelization of the true events ''The Wooden Horse'', Stalag Luft III was designed to be a highly escape-resistant camp. Tunnelling in particular was made harder by the use of numerous environmental and technological solutions: the perimeter fence was placed some distance from the huts, necessitating longer tunnels; the sandy soil was yellow when moist, a markedly different colour than the dry grey surface sand, making disposal of freshly dug tunnel soil difficult; and the Germans employed
seismograph A seismometer is an instrument that responds to ground displacement and shaking such as caused by quakes, volcanic eruptions, and explosions. They are usually combined with a timing device and a recording device to form a seismograph. The out ...
s to measure vibration caused by digging. Williams and Codner came up with the idea of constructing a vaulting horse and using it daily to cover the opening of a tunnel entrance close to the perimeter fence, while the other camp inmates vaulted continuously over the horse to mask the vibration of the tunnelling work. Sand was carried back inside the horse and dried in the attic of the camp canteen before being distributed in the compound. (Peter Tunstall and
Dominic Bruce Dominic Bruce, (7 June 1915 – 12 February 2000) was a British Royal Air Force officer, known as the "Medium Sized Man." He has been described as "the most ingenious escaper" of the Second World War. He made seventeen attempts at escaping from ...
claim to have used a wooden horse to camouflage a tunnel opening in the Spangenberg concentration camp two years previously, in 1941). With the assistance of a third POW,
Oliver Philpot Oliver Lawrence Spurling Philpot (6 March 1913 – 29 April 1993) was a Canadian-born World War II, Second World War Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot and subsequently a businessman, best known for being one of the three men to successfully escape f ...
, the tunnel was completed by 29 October 1943 – an important factor, since Williams, Codner and Philpot planned to use the local railway to quickly put distance between themselves and the camp, rather than the usual escape strategy at the time of travelling on foot at night and hiding in barns or haystacks during the day, but the Escape Committee only had local railway timetables valid until the end of October. The trio made their way by train to the
Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...
; Philpot headed to Danzig (Gdańsk), while Williams and Codner, posing as French labourers, made their way to Stettin (
Szczecin Szczecin ( , , ; ; ; or ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Poland-Germany border, German border, it is a major port, seaport, the la ...
), where they eventually managed to make contact with the
Danish Resistance The Danish resistance movements () were an underground insurgency to resist the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Due to the initially lenient arrangements, in which the Nazi occupation authority allowed the democratic governm ...
and gain passage on a ship to Copenhagen and thence to
Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...
in neutral Sweden. There they met Philpot, who had been able to travel more quickly to Sweden via Danzig. From Sweden, all three officers were repatriated to Britain. After his return to active duty, Williams worked for
MI9 MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) held b ...
, the intelligence organization tasked with supporting available European Resistance networks and making use of them to assist Allied airmen shot down over Europe in returning to Britain. After a period of training in Canada, he was in Italy when the war in Europe ended. He was subsequently sent to the Philippines to do welfare work with liberated Allied prisoners of war. He was there when the war ended. A signed copy of Williams' book ''The Wooden Horse'' was sold at
auction An auction is usually a process of Trade, buying and selling Good (economics), goods or Service (economics), services by offering them up for Bidding, bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from th ...
in 2022, along with a vintage
Rolex watch Rolex () is a Swiss watch brand and manufacturer based in Geneva, Switzerland. Founded in 1905 as ''Wilsdorf and Davis'' by German businessman Hans Wilsdorf and his eventual brother-in-law Alfred Davis in London, the company registered ''Role ...
that was owned by Lt. Charles Maurice Anthony Whitaker, whom Williams had befriended during their time in Stalag Luft III.


Writing career

At the end of the war, on the long sea voyage home on the RMS ''Queen Mary'', Williams wrote ''Goon In The Block'', a short book based on his experiences. Four years later, in 1949, he rewrote it as a much longer third-person narrative under the title ''
The Wooden Horse ''The Wooden Horse'' is a 1950 British World War II war film directed by Jack Lee and starring Leo Genn, David Tomlinson and Anthony Steel. It is based on the book of the same name by Eric Williams, who also wrote the screenplay. The film ...
''. He included many details omitted in his previous book, but changed his name to "Peter Howard", Michael Codner to "John Clinton" and Oliver Philpot to "Philip Rowe". Two years later, he wrote ''The Tunnel'', a prequel to ''The Wooden Horse'' that described his and Codner's escape from Oflag XXIB. Williams also amassed a substantial collection of escape literature and published several anthologies of excerpts from this collection.


Postwar

Williams spent much of the time after 1962 living on his boat ''Escaper'' in the Eastern Mediterranean with his wife Sibyl.


Personal life

Williams married twice, first to Joan Mary Roberts in 1940, then to Sybil Grain MBE in 1948.


Bibliography

* ''Goon in the Block'', Collins, 1945. * ''
The Wooden Horse ''The Wooden Horse'' is a 1950 British World War II war film directed by Jack Lee and starring Leo Genn, David Tomlinson and Anthony Steel. It is based on the book of the same name by Eric Williams, who also wrote the screenplay. The film ...
'', Collins, 1949: revised and slightly augmented in 1979, in particular, removing the fictional episode in which a German dockside guard is killed, enabling the two escapers to board a boat and be smuggled to Sweden. * ''The Tunnel'', Collins, 1951. * ''The Escapers: A Chronicle of Escape in Many Wars with Eighteen First-hand Accounts'', Collins, 1953. * ''Complete and Free''. Travels through France & Italy. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957. (The description of ''Complete and Free'' as a record of travels is literally correct. However, this is actually a loosely autobiographical existential novel that explores the conflicts of individual freedom and the constraints of society. It remembers World War II, and the Wooden Horse escape, while describing Williams and his wife travelling in a post-war Europe devastated by the war, and riddled with smugglers, black market profiteers, and political opportunism.) * ''Dragoman Pass'', Collins, 1959. * ''The Borders of Barbarism'', 1961. * ''More Escapers: In War and Peace with Eighteen First-hand Accounts'', Fontana, 1968.


References


Further reading

*


External links


Wooden Horse Escape Kit Presented To Imperial War Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Eric Royal Air Force officers Royal Air Force pilots of World War II World War II prisoners of war held by Germany Stalag Luft III prisoners of World War II British escapees British World War II prisoners of war Escapees from German detention 1911 births 1983 deaths Shot-down aviators People educated at Christ's College, Finchley