Escape from Siberia!

“You don’t know how hot the day is until the V fan stops turning,” is an opinion shared by all pilots and crewmen who have ever flown in propeller-driven aircraft. And that is certainly how Leutnant zur See (Ensign) Erich Killinger and his pilot, Oberleutnant zur See (Lieutenant [junior grade]) von Gorrissen, must have felt on 6 April 1915 over the Russian coastal city of Libau (now Liepaja in the Soviet Union).¹

They had taken off from their base in Memel, East Prussia (now Klaipeda, Soviet Union), on a reconnaissance mission that took them 40 miles behind the Russian lines. The route took them out over the Baltic Sea, then a right turn toward Libau. Over Libau they made another right turn to fly over the land area between Libau and Palagen. Then they were to head for home, arriving about three hours after takeoff. At least that was the plan.

The mission was to have been a milk run. Fighters had not yet become a problem, and Russian antiaircraft fire was limited to machine guns and rifles. Von Gorrissen stayed well above that.

They had crossed over Libau and were south of the city when the propeller of their Aviatik B. I suddenly sheared off, spun downward, and smashed the starboard float. Powerless, the plane started to descend, and von Gorrissen looked for the best place to crash.

Apparently, he felt they had little chance of surviving if they came down on land, so he turned the stricken plane toward the Baltic. But with only one float and no power, their chances of surviving a ditching at sea were not much better. And even if they survived, they would almost certainly be taken prisoner by the Russians.

The Aviatik hit the water four nautical miles from shore, its remaining float ripping off as the plane somersaulted forward. Upside down, smashed, and twisted, the wreckage started to sink. The port float, still in one piece, drifted away.

The two officers thrashed to the surface, weighted down by their heavy flying clothes, and struggled toward the drifting float. That they made it can be attributed only to their youth and strong will to survive. For three hours they clung to the float waiting for something to happen. Maybe they would be lucky and be rescued by a German patrol boat. But as the hours dragged by and their bodies became numbed from the cold, that hope died.

At midaftemoon, Killinger spotted a longboat coming their way. It was certainly Russian, but the men in the boat might be fishermen. Being rescued by civilians offered a slim advantage—civilians were easier to escape from.

Ten men were in the boat, two armed and in uniform. The other eight were pulling the oars. The sight of two uniformed men in the boat did not look good, and things looked a lot worse when the two soldiers opened fire. Luckily their aim was bad and the longboat came alongside the float before Killinger and von Gorrissen were hit.

Apparently shooting fish in a barrel at point-blank range was not the Russians’ intent, and the two Germans were quickly hauled into the boat. Killinger and von Gorrissen were alive and uninjured, but they were prisoners of war.

It was dark when they arrived on shore, and they were cold and stiff from sitting motionless, their hands on their heads. As a result, they were a little slow getting out of the boat and the Russians dragged them roughly ashore and pushed them to the ground. Their hands and feet were bound, and they were blindfolded and tossed into a truck.

Freezing cold in their wet uniforms, bouncing on the hard cargo bed every time the truck hit one of the innumerable pot holes or bumps in the dirt road, they traveled all night, arriving in Libau at 0900 on 7 April.

They were taken directly to the train station, where their blindfolds and leg bonds were removed. They did not like what they saw. The station platform was ringed by armed troops who were holding back a very large and very angry crowd of civilians. Neither man could understand Russian, but it was obvious that the crowd wanted their heads

Their next stop was Wilna, where a naval officer questioned them. The interrogation was a preview of what lay ahead. They were accused of having bombed the city, which was not true because their aircraft had been unarmed. The two airmen were not even carrying side arms. But the Russians were convinced that they were guilty and threatened to hang them. When Killinger recalled the angry crowd at the train station in Libau, he believed the threat was real.

At that point, Killinger decided it was time to demand their rights as officers. He complained about the treatment they had gotten—being bound and blindfolded, tossed like baggage into a truck, and not being given dry clothes.

The Russian officer suggested that their situation could improve—but only if Killinger would give him information. He proceeded to ask about military matters, showing particular interest in U-boats and aircraft. But one question he asked surprised Killinger, because it demonstrated how little the Russians really knew about their enemy’s activities.

The query was about the heavy cruiser, SMS Friedrich Carl. Commissioned in 1903, the cruiser was already obsolescent and had been assigned to coastal defense. But what Killinger knew and the Russian obviously did not was that the Friedrich Carl had hit a mine and gone down off Memel on 17 November 1914.² Killinger kept the news to himself.

Then the Russian asked about the light cruiser SMS Augsburg. He was particularly interested in the ship because she had reportedly shelled Libau, causing heavy civilian casualties. That explained the angry crowd.

Following several hours of interrogation, they were sent to St. Petersburg, where they were put into solitary confinement in the Peter-Paul Prison. For five weeks the)' were interrogated daily, many of the sessions punctuated with threats of execution.

Toward the end of May, they were put together with 25 other POWs and sent by rail to a prison camp at Omsk, in central Russia. There they were held for 20 days, under terrible conditions and without provisions. They survived only because the Austrian prisoners, who made up most of the camp’s population, shared their meager rations with the Germans.

Finally, they were sent farther east to a permanent camp in Udinski, in the Irkutsk region. There, conditions improved, but not much. German officers were issued either a blanket or a mattress—they were expected to pair up— and were paid 28 rubles per month. But it was a company- store arrangement. The 28 rubles went to buy food and anything else needed. And everything was expensive. The result was that 28 rubles did not go far.

Events at the front, however, resulted in another move for the prisoners. The German-Austrian offensive between Gorlice and Tamow opened on 2 May 1915. By 30 September the Russians had been driven back to a line that stretched from Riga on the Baltic to Czemowitz on the Rumanian border. Stung by the defeat and the political results, the Russians retaliated against the German POWs. In October 1915, all German officers in Udinsk were shipped to a camp at Spassk, north of Vladivostok.

Jammed into cattle cars, the Germans shivered and starved as the train rolled slowly eastward. Killinger now decided that the only way he was going to survive was to escape, and he made plans to jump from the train as it Passed through Manchuria near the Chinese border. It was not an easy decision. Winter was setting in and all he had to wear was his uniform. He had no maps and only a general idea of the region’s geography. Was the area entirely wasteland or was it populated? Where was the nearest European settlement? At what point would it become safe to ride the train south toward China—if at all? Who Would go with him?

Three men elected to join him: Marine-Obermaschinist (Warrant Officer) Ernst Lehmann; Leutnant der Reserve Cleinow, a flier; and Oberleutnant (Lieutenant) Brunn, a Guards Grenadier.

They planned to jump from the train after dark just after it had passed through Harbin. Once they were off the train, they would run south until they had shaken their Pursuers and then turn west to cross the Harbin-Mukden railroad. Once across the railroad, they would again head south, skirting Mukden before curving back toward the railroad. They believed that south of Mukden the trains Were crewed by Chinese, and it would be safe to ride a train.

A few days before the train reached Harbin, the Russians added a fourth-class car to the train, and the four men managed to join the prisoners who were moved into it. It was a break, but not one that came on a silver platter. The car was heavily guarded by eight Cossacks at one end and ten infantrymen at the other. The windows were double windows, securely nailed shut from the outside. Still, the chance for escape was much better there than in the cattle cars, and the men made their preparations. They collected what money and food they could get and put it all in a rucksack that Killinger carried. In all, they collected 50 rubles, 160 Austrian kronen, and a small amount of bread and sausage.³

On 28 October 1915 at 2300, the four men made their move. The train was creeping along at about 15 miles per hour when they smashed out a window and leaped through it. The escape caught the guards flatfooted. But a guard on the platform saw the men tumbling out and jerked the emergency stop alarm. The train ground to a halt as the four Germans fled into the night.

But it was dark and the Russian guards, unable to see and uncertain about which direction the Germans had taken, soon gave up the pursuit and returned to the train. And why not? There was little chance that the fleeing prisoners would survive for more than a few days.

The four fugitives stumbled across the broken ground until they were too exhausted to go on. They stopped, rested, and listened. They heard nothing. There was no pursuit. They pushed on through the night until dawn forced them to take refuge among a stand of willows. They intended to remain there all day and then move out at dusk.

But throughout the morning the temperature dropped and the wind grew steadily stronger. By noon they were enveloped in a major snowstorm. Obviously they could not stay where they were. They had to find shelter. At this point they got lucky in that they found a peasant’s hut fairly quickly. The peasant showed no interest in turning them in, and he was willing to give them food.

For the next five weeks they endured freezing cold, frostbite, and starvation as they pushed on toward Mukden, about 300 miles away. Because of snowstorms, hunger, and the threat of bandits, they were forced to continue making contact with local peasants, buying food, shelter, and directions for as long as their money lasted and begging for them after it ran out. They were lucky they were never turned in.

Early in December they arrived in Mukden and located the German consulate. There they were given civilian clothes, 50 Mexican silver dollars, and false passports. They split up. Killinger and Brunn, bearing U.S. identity papers and passports, took the Japanese train to Tientsin. Ernst Lehmann and Leutnantder Reserve Cleinow went separate ways, Cleinow disguised as a Swiss missionary.⁴

On board the train, Killinger, already weakened by captivity and the rigors of the escape, came down with dysentery. By the time they reached Tientsin he had to be hospitalized.

In Tientsin he was contacted by the German consul, who presented him 300 Mexican silver dollars. A German agent named von Hannecken also contacted him and gave him an additional 600 Mexican dollars and advised him to travel to the German consulate in Shanghai, where the Final arrangements would be made to get Killinger back to Germany.

Late in December, Killinger felt well enough to travel and he took the train to Shanghai. En route he stopped in Nanking to visit the crew of the interned SMS S-90.

In Shanghai he was reunited with Oberleutnant Brunn, and heard that Leutnant der Reserve Cleinow had already passed through and was en route back to Germany. The consul gave each officer 500 Mexican silver dollars and 300 yen. By now Killinger was virtually staggering under the weight of the fortune he had been given. Subtracting expenses along the way, he was lugging around about 1,000 Mexican silver dollars in two leather suitcases—about 20 pounds each.

The fugitives were told they had two routes to choose from. They could go to Tokyo and then back across Russia a via Vladivostok and St. Petersburg, and on to Stockholm. That was considered the safest and easiest route because the Russians were very lax. There was a report that one army officer, Captain Hauptmann Kempe, traveled the route on a Norwegian passport even though he spoke absolutely no Norwegian. That was the route Cleinow had chosen, and Brunn said that was the way he wanted to go too.

The other route was considered much more dangerous. It went through Nagasaki and Yokohama, on to Honolulu and San Francisco, across the United States to Chicago, then to New York, and finally across the Atlantic to Nor- ii way. But there were serious obstacles along the way. In the first place, the Germans were uncertain about the Japanese attitude toward Germany. Intelligence reports described the Japanese as essentially pro-German, but reluctantly allied with Britain.⁵ In view of the fact that the Japanese were at war with Germany, had seized the German naval base at Tsingtao, and were holding hundreds of German POWs under brutal conditions, this view seemed optimistic.

Moreover, British agents were everywhere. A single slip of the tongue would result in arrest at any point along the route. The passage across the Atlantic was the most dangerous stretch of this route. The British Tenth Cruiser Squadron had effectively sealed off Germany from Atlantic traffic. Rarely did a ship—any ship—slip through the patrol lines.⁶ The British, aware that German reservists, agents, and escaped POWs were trying to reach Germany, agents, and escaped POWs were trying to reach Germany, carefully examined ships’ passengers and crewmen.

As a matter of policy, the British “placed no value” on Swiss or Dutch passports. Any adult male bearing those documents had to have his identify verified by a Swiss or Dutch government official. And until that was done, the man remained in British custody. Similar, but less serious, difficulties faced anyone using Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish papers.⁷

Killinger had seen of Russia, so he chose the Japan-United States-Atlantic route. On 1 January 1916, he departed Shanghai on board the SS Shinyu Maru. His passport identified him as a French-Swiss national, Richard du Fais, an engineer and salesman for a Swiss machine accompany, Brown, Boveri & Company. Killinger had chosen the identity for the trip to America because he spoke fluent French, albeit with a German accent. Swiss citizenship would account for that—maybe.

Other than a minor scare at departure time when he lost his ticket and had to submit his passport to a British customs officer, he was never bothered on his trip to the United States. En route he gathered intelligence whenever he could and he talked to his fellow passengers about their attitudes toward Germany. Curiously, his opinion was that Japanese citizens were pro-German, but the government was staunchly pro-British. Americans were a mixed bag.⁸

He arrived in San Francisco on 25 January 1916 and immediately had a major scare—one so bad that he left San Francisco the same day for Chicago. Somehow a reporter got wind of the fact that he was an escaped German naval officer trying to return to Germany. In an extra edition that hit the streets that afternoon, he was described as a German naval pilot who had escaped from East Siberia and was traveling under the name du Fais.⁹

How the reporter got the information is a mystery, but the fault was probably Killinger’s. He talked to a lot of people about the war and he may have let something slip. And it wouldn’t have taken much of a slip to get the press’s wind up. The previous day four sailors, three Austrian and one German, all escapees, had been arrested in San Francisco on board the SS Sheridan.¹⁰

The German agent in San Francisco, Kapitanleutnant (Lieutenant) Sauerbeck, immediately gave Killinger a new identity as a German-American, C. H. Frank, and put him on the train for Chicago. He also gave him $200 in gold coins and told him whom to contact in Chicago.

Other than the excitement in San Francisco, Killinger’s trip since leaving Shanghai had been rather pleasant and ^very expensive. He was, by the existing standards, loaded with money. And he spent it. He bought silk material in Japan, ordered new suits, and traveled first class across the United States. And he paid bribes whenever necessary. In fact, he spent so much money that he was broke by the time he got home.

His stay in Chicago was just long enough to meet his contact and pick up a new identity. This time he was a French citizen with the last name Du Sous. He was also 'old to go to the offices of the Hamburg-Amerika Line at “15 Broadway in New York.

In New York the agent sent him down the street to 9 Broadway, the office of Oberzahlmeister (Chief Paymaster) Reicke. There he was given another $200 in gold coins and told to go either to an address in Hoboken or to Mother in Baltimore, where he could buy a blank passport, forged visas, and seals. The price was $50-100.

Reicke told him that once he had the blank passport he could fill in any identity he wanted to use. Then all he had to do was get a photograph and have the previously impressed seal placed on the photograph using the hectograph method. The entire process could be completed in a day. Or, if he wanted to, he could simply go to a waterfront bar and buy a seaman’s personal papers. There were Plenty of men willing to sell them cheaply. But he was Warned to be careful, because if the men in the bar thought he had a lot of money, they would murder him to get it.

He was also given a list of ships that would take him aboard either as a crewman or a passenger. But he was warned to be alert for British agents. Reicke suggested he approach the ship’s captain, explain his circumstances, and enlist the captain’s aid. Buy it if necessary. If the captain agreed, he would never give Killinger up to the British, because if he did, the British would seize his ship and cargo. So once the captain took Killinger aboard, he was in for the whole trip.

Killinger did not follow his instructions. Instead, he went directly to the waterfront and signed aboard a Dutch steamer, the SS Nordam, as a fireman. It was a dumb stunt, probably motivated by his eagerness to be on his way. The problem was that he was still using his French identity and he could not pull it off if he were questioned. It was a sure bet that the British would scrutinize the crewmen of a Dutch steamer very carefully. What saved him was the unexpected arrival aboard the Nordam of several British passengers. When all those British showed up, Killinger got smart and left the ship, going directly to Baltimore, where he obtained a new identity.

He was again a French-Swiss national, Jean Epars. On 10 February 1916, he boarded the Norwegian steamer SS Storfjeld as a stoker. His name was not on the crew list.

Before boarding, Killinger took a precaution that showed he was thinking again. Recalling the warning about British treatment of men carrying Swiss papers, he wrote to his sister in Germany. He told her to go to Switzerland and contact Pastor Epars, whose family name Killinger was using. He had once roomed in a pension with the pastor and hoped the clergyman would remember that. His sister was to explain the circumstances to Pastor Epars and warn him that if questioned he was to say that Jean Epars was his son. Given the situation at the time, the effort was probably futile. But by the time he was confronted by a British examining officer, Killinger’s survival instincts were razor sharp.

During the trip across, Killinger was essentially a stowaway, in that he was not listed as a crewman and he stayed out of sight as much as possible. Crewmen who saw him probably thought he was a passenger and the few passengers who occasionally saw him figured he was a crewman. His caution was well founded. Crewmen who reported Germans to the British were paid three pounds sterling. The captain might be trusted, but not the crew.

On 29 February, a British auxiliary cruiser of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron stopped and boarded the SS Storfjeld. She was ordered into Stornoway (on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides) for closer inspection. When the examining officer came aboard in Stornoway, he called the crew together and set up his examining room in the captain’s cabin. The passengers were questioned ashore.

Killinger found it surprisingly easy to defeat the system. The crewmen were grouped outside the captain’s door waiting to be called in one at a time. A man went in, the door was closed, and a while later he came out. As he stepped through the door a guard told him to stand off to the side. Eventually, the group waiting to be questioned was about the same size as the group that had been questioned.

Hanging back, Killinger waited until the guard was distracted and then shuffled over to the group that had already been questioned. No one seemed to pay any attention to him. A short time later, the examining officer came out and told the men in the already examined group that they could go back to their stations. Killinger just walked off with them.

On 4 March 1916, the SS Storfjeld arrived in Skien, Norway. Killinger immediately left the ship and took a train to Kristiania (now Oslo), where the consul issued him a military pass and identification—in his own name. He also gave him 50 kronen.

On 6 March 1916, Leutnant zur See Erich Killinger crossed into Germany—without a hero’s welcome. The Germans did not want publicity about men who had used the “Atlantic route,” because it would anger the Americans. Instead, they had him write a series of long reports about his experiences and observations. Then the Germans assigned him to the naval flying station at Ostend, Belgium.¹¹

He had shown remarkable resourcefulness and tenacity and had enjoyed considerable luck during his 11-month experience. At least that is what his new commanding officer thought when he read the reports, because he recommended that Killinger be awarded the Iron Cross First Class. The recommendation was denied. According to the Admiralty, Leutnant zur See Killinger had already been awarded the Iron Cross Second Class before his capture and escape. There was hope, however. The Admiralty noted that since he had been returned to flying duty, he would have ample opportunity to earn the Iron Cross First Class.¹²

He never did get it.