BOOK REVIEW : THE GREAT EPINAL ESCAPE
The air was hectic at the War Office in London with the Allied Landings of D-day just about two weeks away, when a telegram arrived at 8 a.m. on Sunday, 21 May 1944 from the British Military Attache at the Swiss capital, Berne, addressed to MI9, the department that dealt with prisoners of war (POWs). The message contained in it, sent the previous evening, conveyed the information that 186 Indian POWs, who had escaped from a German prison camp in France, had entered Switzerland that afternoon and were camped safely in one of the districts of that neutral country. One of the escapees was killed by Germans while swimming across a river at the frontier, but his mates had recovered his body. Another telegram, after a couple of days, spoke of the number of escapees having risen to 278 and in a matter of weeks it would rise to 500, making it the most successful escape of the entire Second World War.
Information gleamed from the escapees outlined the circumstances of their escape. On 11 May, the American bombers, on one of their missions of softening the enemy before D-day, dropped 168 tons of bombs on the town of Epinal in occupied France. The aircrew did not know that two barracks located on a suburb of the town formed the German POW camp, Frontstalag 315, housing over 3000 Indian POWs. Their bombs took down the walls of both the barracks. Sensing their opportunity, the prisoners grabbed whatever food or clothing they could and shot off, legging southeast for the Swiss border. If they could make it, they would be safe in the neutral territory of Switzerland. But between them and their goal were 100 kilometres of French countryside, milling with thousands of Nazis and collaborators. Many of the escapees were shot by German guards, many others were captured and taken back, but 500 of them did make it. Their incredible saga and that of the scores of ordinary French men and women, peasants, farmers and resistance fighters, who risked their lives, feeding, housing and often hiding so many strange brown men from a far-off land, and guiding them to their destination of freedom, is one of the best accounts of resilience and compassion, in a period marked by brutality, bloodlust and fascism.
The spellbinding story of this audacious escape, which has remained unknown to the world at large for eighty years, has been brilliantly revealed by eminent international researcher and an expert on the Indian Army in the Second World War, Ghee Bowman, in his latest book, The Great Epinal Escape. It was while working on his first book, The Indian Contingent, that he discovered the untold story of the Epinal escape. It is amazing that no film has ever been made, no book written and no article exists in any academic journal or on the internet of this unparalleled feat. The Stalag Luft III escape involving 76 air force officers became famous through a book and later the Hollywood blockbuster, The Great Escape. The Epinal escape, which was far larger in scale, has remained unknown, is indicative of the deep-rooted racial bias of the British authorities and the western media’s ignorance of the immense contribution of the colonial troops or their inherent tendency to focus on the white troops. It is not surprising, given the British reservations about publicizing notable successes of Indian troops, with the infamous example of their blocking the news of the outstanding feat of the Indian Infantry during the First World War from reaching the British press, when they came to the rescue of the British troops in despair with their backs to the wall under German attack in the First Battle of Ypres. Their chronic apprehension was that news of Indian victories over white troops reaching India would inspire the nationalists in the country to take up arms against the colonial government.
The French, by comparison, seems to have been far less racist or not racist at all, by the manner in which many of them went out of their way to help the escapees. 59-year-old blacksmith-farmer, Jules Perrot, who was an artillery veteran of the First World War and a member of the French Resistance, and his wife Jeanne, who lived in the village of Etobon near Epinal, and figure prominently in the narrative, epitomize the human virtues of compassion and courage outstandingly, with their daring missions of sheltering, feeding and guiding the escapees to the Swiss border, involving even their grandchildren to do their bid. It was apparent that the French, in general, had tremendous goodwill for Indian soldiers, the contribution and sacrifices of their predecessors who fought for France during the Great War still fresh in memories of the elderly, who handed down those stories of the ‘brave Indians who fought for France’ to their younger ones.
The escapees comprised men from all parts of India following multiple faiths, reflecting the new face of the Indian Army, which had shed the martial races theory fostered by the British and opened enlistment for men from all across the subcontinent, to meet the massive demand for troops during the war. There were Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, often in regimental groups. One of the groups, which formed a sizeable chunk of the escapees, was that of the 2nd Royal Lancers, with almost 60 escapees, the largest from any unit. An extensively researched work, the book goes on to narrate many a fascinating story of individual soldiers, several of them joining the French Resistance to fight the Germans. Fateh Singh of the Lancers, with his track record of having made an escape from a prison in Hanover, only to be captured though, not only escaped successfully from Epinal, but went on to join the French Resistance to fight the Germans. Havildar Major Vikram Rao Shinde of the Mahratta Light Infantry, led 23 escapees out of the prison and later joined the French Resistance. The Gorkha, Harkabahadur Rai, joined the Resistance after escaping, to fight a fierce battle in the mountains south of Belfort. There was also the interesting episode of two artillery men from Punjab, Naik Ghazi Khan and Havildar Ghulam Abbas, who after their escape, returned to rescue their friend, Fazal Hussain, which they did. Fazal had been court-martialled for striking a German officer and was awaiting to be shot, when the Americans dropped the bombs. All three made it to Switzerland. And then there was A P Mukundan of the Army Postal Service, who was captured and taken back after his escape. Nevertheless, being a literate man, he kept a diary that meticulously recorded the events, which proved to be one of the prime sources of research for the author.
The French Resistance, Forces Francaises de l’ Interieur (FFI), popularly known as Maquis among the rural folk, was also faced with the problem of differentiating the escapees from the Indian soldiers in the ranks of Legion Freies Indien or the German-sponsored Free Indian Army (Azad Hind Fauj), which the Germans had deployed in France, their unit named 950 Regiment., to fight the Allies. Several of the men from the latter deserted and joined the French Resistance. One such case was Signalman Benjamin Nambi, who was taken prisoner at Tobruk.
There were also romantic interludes. Naik Jai Lall from Rohtak, of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC) was a 20-year-old, handsome youngster with a penchant for dramatics and exaggeration. Taken prisoner at El Alamein, he had the run of multiple prison camps before ending up at Epinal. After escaping, strangely, he travelled alone and fell asleep at the edge of a forest near a small village, where he was found by a 16-year-old-French girl, Denise Naidet. Chareciristically, he lied to her that he was a captain in the Indian Army who had been dropped by parachute to organize resistance against Germans. The Naidet family sheltered him, while the Germans combed the area for escapees from Epinal. According to Jai Lall’s account, with brothers of Denise and few other locals, he formed a resistance group that carried out quite a few operations against the Germans. He safely returned home after the war and according to him, Denise had fallen in love with him and they eventually got married and moved to Paris, where she bore him a child. However, there is no record of their marriage in the village and of a child born to her at Paris, while there exists one, of her having married another man on a later date. While some members of the Naidet family thought that Jai Lall joined the resistance and Denise did flirt with him, there is no conclusive evidence that the whole of Jai Lall’s story is true. While most of it could be his figment of imagination, some of the escapees did get married in Europe and chose to spend the rest of their lives there.
In an amazing endeavour of research, the author has also listed all the 500 escapees from Epinal who made it to Switzerland, and also seventeen who arrived prior to the Epinal episode from other prisons, as well as three who reached much later in 1945. Interestingly, of the seventeen who arrived in advance, the larger segment of six was from the 2nd Royal Lancers. The inherent cavalry daring seemed to have played to good effect. Also, among the seventeen, was an officer of the Medical Corps, Captain Birendra Nath Mazumdar, who got into trouble, taking a Swiss girlfriend, which was not appreciated by the senior, racist British officer-escapees lodged with him, who tried to fix him on fake charges to no avail. The Swiss people, by and large, were excited by the presence of so many Orientals in their country, who were somewhat of a novelty to them, and were very welcoming and hospitable. The young among them often tried to befriend the ndians, despite official restrictions of their visiting the escapees’ camps. And finally, at the wars’ end, when all 500 of the Indians boarded a special train that would take them back to France for their onward voyage home, most Swiss were sad to see them leave, many crowding the rail station at Locarno, where they departed from, to wave them goodbye.
All in all, the book tells a fascinating story of courage, which has remained unknown so far to the world. It is a tale of adventure, courage and resilience that reveals the true mettle of the Indian soldiers and the compassion and humanity of the French as a people.
First published in 2024 by The History Press in UK and the Indian edition published by Westland in 2025. 272 pages, including the Appendices with the lists of escapees, acknowledgements, Bibliography, Notes and Index. Priced at Rs.699.00
