Dramatic, highly readable, and fresh, The Great Desert Escape
brings to light an illuminating and little-known account of how
twenty-five determined German U-Boat crewmen tunneled from American
POW camp, crossed the unforgiving Arizona desert, and attempted to
return battle. It was the only organized, large-scale domestic
escape by foreign prisoners in U.S. history. Painstakingly wrung
from contemporary newspaper articles, interviews and first-person
accounts from escapees and the law enforcement officers who pursued
them, The Great Desert Escape brings history alive. From 1942 to
1946, the United States swarmed with captured enemy troops. Nearly
400,000 German soldiers and officers were held in more than 500 POW
camps throughout the country. One such camp was the U.S. Army's
prisoner of war camp at Papago Park just outside of Phoenix,
Arizona, where on December 23, 1944 25 German Kreigsmariners
tunneled free, determined to reach Mexico and find sympathizers who
would get the back to the Fatherland. For the prisoners, life was
at the best of times uneasy. On the outside of their prison fences
were Americans who wanted nothing more than to see them die slow
deaths for their perceived roles in killing their fathers and
brothers in Europe. Many of these stranded German prisoners had
heard rumors of castrations and worse for those who had escaped. On
the inside were on occasion rabid Nazis determined to get home and
continue the fight. At Papago Park in March of 1944, a
newly-arrived prisoner who was believed (correctly) to have
divulged classified information to the Americans was murdered--hung
in one of the barracks by seven of his fellow prisoners. The Great
Desert Escape sheds new light on the little known chapter in World
War II history. Papago Park housed nearly 4000 German POWs, most of
whom were U-boat crewmen. Until the arrival of a new American
commander, it had been a very inefficient and haphazard operation.
Author Keith Warren Lloyd describes the culture of complacency that
had developed among the guards and their officers. Before the Great
Desert Escape, several other attempts had been made. As a dramatic
backdrop to the main narrative, Lloyd describes the life of one of
the escapees: his service as an officer aboard a U-boat, his final
patrol where his U-boat is sunk, his capture and interrogation, his
arrival at Papago Park and finally his involvement in the escape.
In September 1944 the senior POW officer, Jurgen Wattenberg,
directed that tunnel should be dug from the bathhouse to the
Arizona Crosscut Canal, which ran along the northern edge of the
camp. The prisoners obtained digging tools from the guards, telling
them that they wished to construct a volleyball court. They would
go into the bathhouse at night to work on the tunnel. The soil
around Papago Park was extremely hard and full of rocks, so the
guards never expected them to be digging. The tunnel, six feet deep
and 178 feet long, was completed in December of 1944. The plan was
to escape to Mexico and locate people sympathetic to Germany (the
reasons for their sympathy will also be described) who would
arrange passage for them back to the Fatherland. Three of the
escapees had built a collapsible raft and planned to float the Salt
River to the Colorado and then to the Gulf of California, having
seen the Salt River on a stolen map. They didn't know that one
could step easily across the Salt River at that time of year.
Discouraged, the 25 prisoners scattered. The Great Desert Escape
recounts the flight of the prisoners. One U-boat officer found
himself sitting at a lunch counter next to a suspicious Phoenix
Police officer. Another asked for directions from a street cleaning
crew, his accent betraying him. The cold and rainy weather caused
several of the escapees (who by then had been acclimated to the
desert) to turn themselves in. Still others lived like coyotes
among the rocks and caves overlooking Papago Park before being
rounded up. All of the escapees were eventually re-captured within
six weeks. The book will then describe the inquiries and
investigations by the army and the FBI in the aftermath of the
escape. It is an ideal addition to Lyons rich military history
list, including The Long Walk, which has sold more than 300,000
copies.
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