Eric Williams (writer)
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Eric Williams MC (13 July 1911 – 24 December 1983) was an English writer and former
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
RAF pilot and
prisoner of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is 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 wa ...
(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 by a belligerent power in time of war. There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. P ...
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 the 13 July 1911, and was educated at Christ's College, Finchley. In 1940, he joined the
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
.


Capture

RAF
Flight Lieutenant Flight lieutenant is a junior commissioned rank in air forces that use the Royal Air Force (RAF) system of ranks, especially in Commonwealth countries. It has a NATO rank code of OF-2. Flight lieutenant is abbreviated as Flt Lt in the India ...
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). The Stirling was designed during t ...
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 193 ...
at
Schubin Szubin (german: Schubin) is a town in Nakło County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, located southwest of Bydgoszcz. It has a population of around 9,300. It is located in the ethnocultural region of Pałuki. History The first record o ...
in Poland. There he quickly formed a friendship with Lieutenant
Michael Codner Second Lieutenant Richard Michael Clinton Codner MC (29 September 1920 – 25 March 1952) was a British Second World War prisoner of war, best known for being one of the three men to escape successfully from Stalag Luft III in the escape known ...
, 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 , partof = ''Luftwaffe'' , location = Sagan, Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany (now Żagań, Poland) , image = , caption = Model of the set used to film the movie ''The Great Escape.'' It depicts a smaller version of a single compound in ''Stalag ...
in Sagan (now
Żagań Żagań ( French and german: Sagan, hsb, Zahań, la, Saganum) is a town in western Poland, on the Bóbr river, with 25,731 inhabitants (2019). The town is the capital of Żagań County in the historic region of Silesia. Previously in the Zielon ...
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 noises and shaking such as caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and explosions. They are usually combined with a timing device and a recording device to form a seismograph. The output ...
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, MC, DFC (6 March 1913 – 29 April 1993) was a Canadian-born Second World War Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot and subsequently a businessman, best known for being one of the three men to successfully escape from S ...
, 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 originati ...
; Philpot headed to Danzig, while Williams and Codner, posing as French labourers, made their way to
Stettin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin language, Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Po ...
, where they eventually managed to make contact with the
Danish Resistance The Danish resistance movements ( da, Den danske modstandsbevægelse) 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 autho ...
and gain passage on a ship to
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
and thence to
Gothenburg Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
in neutral
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
. There they met Philpot, who had been able to travel more quickly to Sweden via Danzig (Gdansk). 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 highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: (1) assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (P ...
, 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 The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
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 in auction in 2022, along with a vintage Rolex that was owned by Lt. Charles Maurice Anthony Whitaker, who Williams 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 Second World War 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 f ...
''. 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 Second World War 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 f ...
'', 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