It was the great German escape. Twenty two officers had escaped from a tunnel including Skipton prisoner Walther Burghagen, writes historian Alan Roberts

WALTHER Burghagen travelled almost eleven miles from the tunnel at Kegworth, Nottinghamshire, before he was recaptured. The description circulated at the time was simply ‘Good teeth, very smiling. Speaks English with American accent’. He would speak with an American accent; after all his mother was American.

Burghagen was one of the most interesting prisoners at Skipton. He had been an officer on board a submarine, but no U-boats were sunk on the day he was captured. The truth took some time to unravel. Burghagen had been the prize officer aboard a German submarine. He was trying to make his way back home from Spain in a captured Norwegian freighter by going the long way round to the north of Scotland. Just south of Iceland his ship flying a Norwegian flag was spotted by HMS Otway. The wind was blowing at around 20 knots and the waves in the heavy seas were 2 to 3 metres high. A boarding party of just three men was sent across the Atlantic in a rowing boat to disarm the crew of nine Germans aboard the ship. The Germans had been issued with four bombs, together with revolvers and ammunition. They told the boarding party that the ship had been booby-trapped and would explode in half an hour. Fortunately the Germans had been bluffing. They had thrown their bombs and weapons overboard when they had seen the boarding party approaching. The Germans and almost 50 prisoners from three different countries including the crew of a British trawler were ferried across to safety in just over two hours. Burghagen’s own U-boat had been sunk with the loss of all hands two months earlier.

Burghagen’s mother Mathilde, or Tilly for short, had been born in St Louis, Missouri to German parents. At the time almost half the children in public schools in the city were of German origin. Her father was a grocer and employed two other Germans in his store. A 12-year-old Walther Burghagen had visited the USA with his mother and his sister aboard the German-owned liner Deutschland. Burghagen’s American accent would come as no surprise. Over five million Germans had emigrated to the USA in the nineteenth century. If America was going to enter the war on Britain’s side there would be some serious opposition to overcome. Burghagen’s father was a factory owner near Dresden.

Soon after his capture Burghagen made use of his American connections and found himself briefly transferred to a camp for German civilians on the Isle of Man before being sent to Kegworth. His punishment for his short-lived escape was just one month at Chelmsford Prison. He then followed a familiar path: transfer to Colsterdale near Masham followed by a move to Skipton when it opened in 1918. It is not known whether Burghagen was a difficult prisoner to manage, but he did move from camp to camp quite frequently. It is likely that he was accommodated in the same hut as another U-boat officer whose mother had also been born in America. Unfortunately the coincidences break down as they were not in the camp together at the same time.

In February 1919 Burghagen was admitted to Manchester Northern Hospital as a ‘mental case’. Further details are not known. Many German (and British) prisoners suffered from what was known as barbed-wire disease which became an umbrella term for a range of mental conditions including depression and severe mood swings. Another Skipton prisoner had run amok through the camp one evening threatening to kill the British commandant. His family life and his business in Germany lay in ruins and now he wanted revenge. The German officers subdued the distraught prisoner with great difficulty. One officer accompanied his unfortunate comrade to hospital, but was mistaken for a patient when he arrived. He would not easily forget the night he spent at a military hospital surrounded by screaming and yelling German prisoners.

After the war Walther Burghagen became the managing director of his father’s soap factory near Dresden. He was later called up to the German navy days before the Second World War broke out. He initially took part in training submarine crews before taking command of U-219, one of the largest U-boats built during the war. Converted to a transport submarine U-219 sailed to the Far East to supply a flotilla of submarines being established in the Indian Ocean. When the war against Germany ended Burghagen found himself in Jakarta in Indonesia. His U-boat was commandeered by the Japanese who were still fighting against Britain and America.

Burghagen had the double misfortune of being taken prisoner by the British in both world wars. Furthermore he had been held at several locations in Germany including a former concentration camp. His son Heiko had died of malnutrition at a military hospital in Russian-occupied territory.

The man with the good teeth, the very smiling face and the American accent had been on quite a journey. Following his release he simply returned to life as the manager of a chemical factory.