On this morning, the Germans discovered six officers
missing. It seems that some prisoners had snuck at night into the office of the
German Sergeant-Major nicknamed Mussolini and, right behind his desk, had cut a
hole through the back wall to a storeroom beyond. When the time was right, the
six chosen escapers slipped through Mussolini's office and exited the storeroom
disguised as two German officers and four Polish inmates. A real German officer
opened the gate for them, and they were gone. Four were recaptured within a
day, but two—British Flight-Lieut. William Fowler and Dutch Captain D.J. van
Doorninck—reached Switzerland.
