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Unfortunately for Ralph, some of his crew didn’t wait for spring. Six Australians, most of them transfers from Italy, were bitter at having been recaptured in the chaos after Italy’s surrender. They were determined to try again. While working the railway line, James Hilliard, Noel Hammon, Eric Davis, Jack Davis, ‘Bluey’ Murray, and Robert Tellrock slipped off the tracks and into Pohorje, where they hoped to make for Allied lines in southern Italy.
Jack Davis was the only one who hadn’t come from Italy. He’d been in the Reich since 1941 and had a personal mission: he wanted the world to know what happened in Wolfsberg and Maribor. They must be told that Soviet prisoners had been murdered by the thousand. Jack had a photo of Soviet prisoners arriving in camp before their deaths, a picture of real people, with hope and fear in their eyes. It was only a tiny piece of evidence, but it was worth more than the recollections of a few traumatized enlisted men. As far as Jack knew, it might be the only physical evidence that any of those men had even been there.
The escape did not succeed. The group had no contacts to help them travel south even though there were, unknown to them, actually a small number of Partisans nearby. Those Partisans were lying low, running their own escape line and courier network. Only blind luck would have enabled the escapees to reach them. Instead, German patrols recaptured all six. They were returned to Šentilj and locked in one of the barracks while the authorities worked out what to do with them. The escapees were fortunate to arrive back at night, with the rest of the crew there to see them, enabling Jack to palm the photo to another Australian, Alexander Connor, a meticulous man who had lied about his age to join the Australian Imperial Force.1 Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) officers arrived in the morning and turned the camp upside down in search of contraband. Gross followed with a notepad to ensure all confiscations had receipts issued and would be returned.2 The Abwehr did not find the photo, and Alex kept it safe until the end of the war and donated it to the Australian War Memorial.3
The Crow was furious at the escape attempt. It was an amateurish effort that was not the result of mental distress, nor well planned enough to justify the risk. He also feared that such a large escape attempt would lead the camp to be shut down and transferred. After the search Herr Vertrauensmann had a quiet word with Gross, who agreed to try to soothe his superiors. But, for a while, escape dominated camp conversation, along with speculation about the ‘bandits’.4 The Crow gathered the men for Sunday parade and tried to suppress the chatter. ‘Right, you lot! I don’t want anyone else making stupid bolts for the exit. There’s no way you’d make it home: winter is setting in, and we’ve got the Germans breathing down our necks. Next thing you know, we’ll all be packed off to Poland. At least here we’re safe.’
The crew shifted with unease. Some agreed with him; others murmured dissent. Leslie Laws eyed Ralph up and down, unsure if he’d let luxury and a safe billet get the better of him, but The Crow was only doing what was necessary to protect the crew. Unknown to Ralph, however, the six’s example had revived Leslie’s hopes of flight. Somehow, at some point, he resolved, he would escape.5 Five of the bolters were transferred to other camps; Eric stayed and joined Leslie’s band as a violinist.
1046GW was not shut down, but it did move quarters. On Thursday 28 October the prisoners gathered their possessions and boarded a southbound service to Maribor.6 Their new home comprised two large wooden barracks in a railway yard fenced with barbed wire. Outside was another barrack where the guards would sleep. There was a storage area for Red Cross parcels, not only for this camp but also for distribution to all the Arbeitskommandos in the region. Herr Vertrauensmann and Herr Kommandoführer would be responsible for their delivery.
Inside the wire was a large concrete-walled shed. The colour drained from Ralph’s face when he saw it. He was back at the Zollschuppenlager. The shed still crawled with bugs and the foul odour of the thousands murdered. The two wooden barracks, all that was left of the old XVIIID camp, had fallen into dilapidation. Ralph snapped. He gave the guards, railway employees and the Fritz Schlie company foremen the tantrum of their lives. Gross agreed to disinfect the shed just to stop him from yelling. Ralph was able to pull out a man from the crew to carry out renovations: Len Austin, a cheerful Londoner dubbed ‘Eggy’ who was a handy carpenter. Len would stay with Ralph in Maribor to make the barracks comfortable while the crew worked.7 The venue was lousy, but the change to Maribor was agreeable, cutting two hours off the daily commute.
However, the move meant The Crow had to rebuild the camp’s black-market network – with even bigger plans. As winter set in, the men needed entertainment, so he organized amateur dramatics in the camp. As in Wudinna, he would put on a spectacle to remember: The Crow would be MC and producer of a Christmas variety show. He set about recruiting acts. George Shaw was a stout, balding Australian recently arrived from Italy who led a group of half a dozen preparing Fair Em – the Miller’s Daughter of Manchester, a Shakespearean-era romantic comedy.8 George transcribed the entire script from memory (as best he could). Others prepared slapstick routines, monologues, and drag romantic duets. More music was needed, though, and while Leslie could still remember a few songs off by heart, they needed some hits. For some time Ronte had been trying to send her husband sheet music in the post, but the Germans always destroyed it for fear of sheet music’s potential for coded messages. Herr Vertrauensmann had a conversation with Herr Kommandoführer: would it be possible to allow it to pass through? Gross considered his options. Yes, if Herr Vertrauensmann immediately transcribed a copy and destroyed the original. That would avoid trouble with the Abwehr.
In this way Ralph was able to get copies of ‘Elmer’s Tune’ and ‘Maria Elena’, both current jazz band hits in Britain and Australia.9 Leslie was delighted when Ralph passed him a copy; any ill-feeling or doubts over Ralph’s attitude to the escape attempt was forgotten, and Ralph was invited to sing in the band, which by now had ballooned to seven men. Leslie squeezed the piano accordion, Phillip Tapping blew a trumpet, the Hoffman brothers were a guitar rhythm section, Eric Davis played silky violin, and now they had The Crow on vocals.10 Leslie was the musical director to Ralph’s artistic director. Both believed themselves in charge, but responsibilities were divided to avoid any conflict.
For those not interested in the show, The Crow leveraged resources to keep the men engaged. The Combine allowed an Australian, Eric Edwards, to borrow a camera from one of the Fritz Schlie foremen and to buy some film to photograph events. For exercise, an indoor badminton court was constructed. The net was improvised from Red Cross parcel packaging, and crude wood cut-outs were used for racquets.11 Seeing their production preparations, Gross approached The Crow with a surprising offer: they could rent sets and costumes from the Maribor Opera House. The old Slovenian producers had long since been replaced by members of Graz’s Austrian Provincial Theatre.12 Gross had ingratiated himself with the new management and was able to offer Ralph the goods in return for a few discreet payments. Ralph jumped at the chance. On one December Sunday, the production team hauled props from the Opera House to 1046GW. There were tuxedos, tweed jackets, jackboots, mock officers’ uniforms and epaulettes; for the drag acts there were beautiful black dresses and convincing blond wigs. They also had a few painted backdrops, including one mimicking an Alpine manor house.13
The only thing left was to create food for a Christmas party. Ralph worked hard, hitting up the local farms and businesses in town; Gross exchanged some of their Lagergeld into Reichsmarks, and Ralph had an ongoing parole into Maribor. It was rarely a pleasant experience: having been under an iron grip for years now, the townsfolk were cold and unwelcoming.14 Most of Ralph’s interactions were with Germans secure in their lives. ‘Ah, you have such beautiful Hochdeutsch!’ remarked the proprietor one day at a bakery where Ralph was arranging a special commission. ‘It is a pleasure to listen to you. Your German is so pure no one would ever believe you were actually German!’
A map of Maribor City. The railways and railway station are marked, as are the opera house, cathedral and castle.
Map 8. Maribor City
Ralph laughed, but he was shocked by the revelation. He’d worked so hard at proper German that he’d over-reached! With thoughts of escape uppermost in his mind, he made a note to learn the local rural dialects. There was one Slovenian he managed some pleasant conversations with, a young woman called Kristina Tinka who lived in an apartment behind the camp.
Christmas Eve arrived on a cold Friday night. The prisoners and their guards crammed into a room in the old Austro-Hungarian barracks at the centre of the defunct Stalag XVIIID camp. The curtain parted, revealing The Crow in a white jacket and black trousers at a mock microphone. Behind him, the band stood in two rows. Give a warm welcome, he asked the audience – to the Marburg Vaudevillians! The crowd erupted in applause. The first item was Ralph and Leslie’s band performing ‘Elmer’s Tune’. A bouncy jazz tune struck up. ‘Why are the stars always winkin’ and blinkin’ above? What makes a fellow start thinkin’ of fallin’ in love . . .’
The show had the same format as the Wudinna review. Each song was followed by a sketch. First, a prisoner called Willie Walshaw performed a solo sketch as a British officer. Then came a Chaplin routine, and so on. Musical interludes included Ralph singing Comedian Harmonist songs in German. (A German close harmony and comedy ensemble, Ralph had seen the Comedian Harmonists perform in Adelaide before the war.) Len Hewlett, stunning in a black dress and blond wig, sang a romantic duet, ‘Green Eyes’, with Jock Inglis. Sketches and songs gave way to the Fair Em production, a campy tale of comic love that followed several lovers, including William the Conqueror, in various contrived situations. Isolated for so long, the men craved this sort of absurd escapism, where everyone in Fair Em bonded with a partner: the happy ending sent the audience into raptures.
With everyone in high spirits, The Crow picked his moment; he hadn’t actually asked the men before the show if they were willing to pay for the props, and now he appealed to the crowd to cover the costs. When he stepped down, Leslie got a good laugh in by commanding the band to strike up the tune ‘No, No! A Thousand Times, No!’15 The show later closed with the band playing ‘Maria Elena’. After several rounds of applause, the audience and performers adjourned to the Christmas feast.
The Crow had outdone himself: all the best Red Cross food had been saved, the camp cooks had baked some marvellous cakes, and The Crow had procured monstrous quantities of wine, cider, and spirits. Even a barrel of beer was produced! The Maribor baker had come through as well and delivered a fresh batch of white bread.16 White bread was hard to come by, but it was a taste of home that swelled the prisoners’ hearts. Leslie and Ralph were overwhelmed by the show they’d pulled off. Ralph loved the applause, and Leslie was ecstatic to have a proper gig again. They all ate well and drank, toasting that 1944 might bring great things.