The Spirit in the Cage
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The Spirit in the Cage is a book written by Peter Churchill, DSO, Croix de Guerre, published in 1954. It was the last of three books describing his wartime experience in the French section of the Special Operations Executive. It describes his captivity in France and Germany, and that of Odette Sansom, from April 1943 until the end of the war, when they were eventually released.
Synopsis
The Spirit in the Cage describes the captivity of Peter Churchill and his courier,
Odette Sansom, in France then in Germany. Churchill and Sansom claimed they were a married couple and related to Winston Churchill
to make themselves seem more valuable as prisoners and less likely to be executed as spies. They were sent to different concentration camps, where they were sentenced to death, and Odette tortured, and but both escaped execution.
Churchill was initially taken to the German barracks in Annecy, then to
SS left the prisoners behind as American forces were approaching.[2] He also excelled in sports – he had the reputation of being one of the finest ice-hockey blues the university had produced.[3]
On 27 April, he was taken 15 miles to the south to Wildsee, where on 4 May he was liberated by the
Fifth United States Army. He was taken to Naples for debriefing by officers from the Crimes Investigations Departments and testified against his former captors. On 12 May 1945, Churchill was flown back to England in the personal aircraft of Air Marshal Garrow.[2]
Odette was sent to
Ravensbrück
, where she endured terrible torture, but revealed nothing to her captors.
References
- ^ Peter Koblank: Die Befreiung der Sonder- und Sippenhäftlinge in Südtirol, Online-Edition Mythos Elser 2006 (in German)
- ^ a b SOE Personal File at National Archives
- ^ Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker’s War 1941–45, Leo Marks, 1998