Robert Johnson

From Brian Cooper. 16/06/2024

ON PUBLISHING OF JEROME CAMINADA’S BOOK, MY PURPOSE HOLDS, HE AND ROBERT JOHNSON ARE DESCRIBED AS THE ONLY BRITISH CIVILIANS TO ESCAPE FROM A GERMAN POW CAMP.
• Detained by the Germans 6 May 1940 at Kalundberg , Denmark. Johnson was in Denmark as an agricultural student.
• Moved to Flensburg and then on to Stalag XIIIA Nurnberg Langwasser; allocated POW No 17487.
• Moved to Ilag XVIII Wülzburg near Weissenburg. Here he meets Jerome Charles Caminada [POW No. 17932].
• Johnson and Howard Gee escaped Würzburg but recaptured after five or six days when, having tired of walking to the Swiss border, they boarded a goods train.
In recalling Johnson and Gee’s escape attempt, Caminada says of Johnston that he was:“a Yorkshire man who was undoubtedly the best man in the camp for rough and ready escape. ‘Johnny’ Johnson had been studying agriculture on a Danish farm when he too was taken by the wide German sweep. He was a scientific out-of-doors man. Once out of a fortress, he would be able to fend for himself on foot, judging ground and direction, finding a bed where a townsman would see only hard ground. His skill with his hands and his astonishing patience, his ingenuity and craftsmanship were a model for any prisoner, behind bars or outside the. camp. Add to this a Yorkshire dourness and caution, and proper endurance, and you can see that he must sit in the highest cabinet of escapers. His one disadvantage at that time was that he spoke no foreign language at that time, but the vivacious Gee could have enough words in foreign languages for more than two men. His brilliance there would match the resourcefulness of Johnson, who made a point of keeping his mouth shut.
• September 1941 Moved to Ilag VIII at Tost – Gleiwitz [now Toszek); two days and nights by train passing through Chemnitz, Dresden and Breslau.
Volunteered to work in a sawmill on the road to Gleiwitz ca. 2 km from the camp.
After an escape attempt from the sawmill recaptured about 3 km from the main camp; sentenced to 21 days solitary confinement for the attempted escape. This was followed by 82 days segregated refinement.
• Overnight 10/11 September 1942 escaped from Ilag VIII with Robert Johnson.
Walking, Caminada, in his book, suggests that they passed by Oppeln (now Opole) until they found the River Oder where they turned southwest initially attempting to follow the river course. In turn skirted Ratibor (now Racibórz) and east of Teschen (now Cieszyn). Still walking arrived at Jablunka (sic, seems to refer to Jablunkov (German: Jablunkau) a town now in Frýdek-Místek District in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic).
Jumped a train transporting iron ore towards Slovakia. Finally identified a station sign which said Cadca and recognised that they were in Slovakia. The train moved on though Mosty [Mosty u Jablunkova] to a goods yard where they remained overnight. Left the by now engineless goods wagons and walked to Žilina where they jumped another train wagon filled with railway sleepers marked for Bratislava. When they judged that the train was near Bratislava left the train and walked towards the Slovakia-Hungary border. After spending a night in a straw stack, they were detained by an armed Hungarian.
In his book Caminada records the journey through Germany as taking 13 days i.e. 11 to 23 September.
The following morning turned over to the Hungarian border gendarmerie. A short train ride then took them to Komarom where they entered a multi-national detention camp masquerading as military prisoners of war. At Komárom they were visited by a representative of the Swiss Protecting Power and they, no doubt, pressed a case that they should not be held in a detention camp alongside prisoners of war held by the Hungarians.
Amongst the British POWs at Komarom they meet Reg Collins and Ted Lancaster whose path to freedom became entwined with Caminada and Johnson’s journey.
• Early December 1942, all British escapees held at Komarom moved to a camp at Siklós near the Yugoslav border.
• In January 1943, Caminada and Johnson were advised that their status as civilians, rather than as military prisoners of war, had been confirmed and that formal papers to that effect had been received by the Ministry of the Interior in Budapest.
Hungary detained escaped prisoners of war in conditions no different to those held in German prisoners of war camps while escaped civilian internees, who reached Hungary, were released to live freely in Hungary provided they did not break Hungarian laws. All efforts by the German authorities to have British prisoners of war and civilians handed over to them were rebuffed by the Hungarian Government until the Germans tightened their grip on Hungarian affairs in March 1944.
British civilians living in pre-war Hungary continued to live freely in Hungary. It is not clear to the author what happened to these civilians when the Germans tightened their grip on Hungarian affairs in 1944 but some at least were not detained by the Hungarians/Germans.
• In early February orders were issued for Caminada and Johnson to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior where they were advised that they were free to live in Budapest subject only to the need to report periodically to the police.
Living freely in Budapest was financed by funds from the Swiss Legation drawn from a British Government account left when the British Legation to Hungary had returned to the UK plus Caminada and Johnson’s earnings as English teachers. Caminada’s description of their time as teachers reads more like Hungarians able and willing enough to support British civilians in Budapest now that the fortunes of war had changed for the Germans and a desire to practice English learnt pre-war and unused for years. Life seems to have been something of a continual social whirl of activity.
Caminada and Johnson no doubt hoped that the Swiss Legation in Budapest could assist in their repatriation to the UK. Nothing ever came of such a hope.
• In May 1943 Caminada and Johnson started studying the possibility of escape from Hungary either by barge along the Danube or by train using false passports at the same time hoping that something might come from the Hungarian Government’s desire to exit the war by revoking their support for the Germans. Hope lingered on into 1944 only to be dashed, in March 1944, by the German occupation of Hungary to prevent the country’s defection for the Axis alliance and to ensure the German installation of a more pro-Nazi government in Budapest.
• After the German occupation of Hungary, Caminada and Johnson were allowed to continue living at liberty while in contrast the Germans attempted to arrest escaped prisoners of war to return them to Germany.
• Sometime in the summer of 1944 Caminada and Johnson sought and received an invitation from friends to visit Transylvania, then part of Hungary. Granted permission to travel outside Budapest this provided the opportunity to reconnoitre right up to a border crossing into Romania at Kolos (sic. Koluzs and now Cojocna, Romania) near Kolosvar (sic. Kolozsvár but now Cluj-Napoca).
Returning to Budapest, it was now early September, and a decision was taken to try to cross the border into Romania at Kolos planning from there to walk twenty kilometres to Torda, inside Romania, and from there take a train to Bucharest.
• After a day walking around in circles near Kolos, they finally reached a Romanian border post. Welcomed by locals they were put on a train the following day to Torda. Here they heard the news in German on the BBC European Service that Italy had capitulated [8 September 1943]. Moving on again a train journey of a day and a half bought them, via Brasov and Ploesti, to Bucharest and army headquarters. Sent to a villa to await a decision from the Romanians on their future, they found themselves once again under armed guard at the headquarters of the Romanian secret police.
At the headquarters of the Romanian secret police, Caminada and Johnson met Lancaster and Collins, who had separately escaped from Siklós and made their way into Romania.
• 23 September 1944 All four were taken to a school in Bucharest to join American prisoners then in Bucharest for onward transportation to a new camp in the Carpathians; the Americans being survivors of bombing raids on the oilfields and refineries at Ploesti and other infrastructure facilities.
Moved by bus via Ploesti, Sinaia, Timisul de Sus to the camp at Timisul de Jos just to the south of Brasov.; the camp being Lagărul No 18. After their experiences from 1940 in German camps perhaps Caminada and Johnson saw some truth the commandant’s view of the camp as almost hotel like.
• While Caminada and Johnson appear to have sought the assistance of the Swiss Legation in Bucharest in gaining freedom of the camp, no response was forthcoming. Thoughts again turned to the possibility of escaping the camp with the obvious direction of flight being via Bulgaria. The perceived reputation of the Bulgarians for sending any prisoner of war detained by them back towards Germany dampened enthusiasm for escape.
As in Hungary, the Romanian Government resisted all pressure from the Germans to return escaped prisoners of war to them.
• March 1944 A visit to Timisul de Jos by the Rumanian dictator Antonescu. While meeting prisoners, Caminada presented him with a letter requesting that Johnson and he be set free. No reply was received from Antonescu.
April 1944. The Americans and British launched an air campaign against the Germans in Rumania. Raids against Ploesti in August 1943 had been followed by a lull before the storm of April 1944. The raids brought a new influx of prisoners of war to Timisul de Jos.
• 13 April Believing there no hope of being moved to Bucharest and freedom, Caminada, Johnson, and four others determined on escape by digging a tunnel. By mischance they were almost immediately discovered and sentenced to 10 days confinement to rooms; the camp though had no detention facility. Some weeks later they were sent to the punishment camp at Slobozia for a month.
At some point during the stay at Slobozia D-Day occurred although the Rumanians said that the Allies had been thrown back into the sea.
• Caminada and Johnson again started to contemplate trying to get away with an attempt planned for 24 August.
After the Axis front in northeastern Romania collapsed in the face of a successful Soviet offensive, on 23 August 1944 a coup état led King Michael of Rumania, supported by several political parties, forced the resignation and arrest of the pro-Nazi government, the formation of a new government supportive of switching sides to support the Allies against Germany.
Despite the presence of a whole German army in Romania, the German Government opted to withdraw into Hungary to make their next stand against the Soviet Army’s advance into central Europe. Though the Germans withdrew through Rumania they left there normal calling card by bombing Bucharest and destroying Rumanian infrastructure as they went.
Once again Caminada and Johnson were free men.
• 29 August the prisoners held at Timisul de Jos arrived in Bucharest.
Operation Reunion. 56 B-17s were mustered for the airlift of POWs, flying into Romania in three waves of 12 bombers each, timed to arrive in Bucharest at one-hour intervals. A total of 739 POWs were repatriated on August 31st, while the remaining 393 prisoners would fly home on September 1st, including twelve ambulatory patients on stretchers.
The final stragglers who had evaded capture in Romania would be flown home on September 3rd, closing out Operation Reunion with a total of 59 Fortress sorties, 94 Lightning sorties, 281 Mustang sorties, and one C-47 sortie, repatriating a total of 1,127 Americans, 31 British airmen, two Dutch naval officers, one French soldier, and one Romanian stowaway with shaky claims to American citizenship. Back at their respective bases, half-starved POWs slowly came back to life.
• 1 September Caminada and Johnson, and other British military personnel held in Romania arrived Bari transit camp on the second day of the evacuation.
• 3 September Moved to Naples by train.
• 5 September Left Naples by sea transport; arrived in Liverpool on 14 September.

Data source: References.
1. Jerome Caminada, My Purpose Holds, published by Jonathan Cape, London, 1952.
2. The UK National Archives WO 416/198/410 [German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War] Robert Johnson
3. The UK National Archives WO 361/1859 Prisoners of war, Hungary: prisoner of war camp at Siklós; report by the Swiss Legation, Budapest 1943 Jan 01 – 1943 Dec 31.
4. https://dailydosedocumentary.com/operation-reunion/ accessed 10 September 2023.