Gunther Plüschow, ‘The one that got away’: from Gravesend in 1915

By Victor Smith

Making his daring get-away from Gravesend in July 1915, Lieutenant Gunther Plüschow, a German naval aviator, gained the distinction of becoming the only German prisoner of war to escape from Britain itself in either world war.

This feat was celebrated at an international event held in Gravesend and Tilbury on its centenary in July 2015 and on another anniversary in July 2021. Plüschow’s escape was, but one exploit in his dare-devil life of adventure. This began in 1914 in China, where he flew numerous and risky reconnaissance missions over the lines of the Japanese and British forces besieging the German colony of Tsingtao. Starting his departure back to Germany just before the fall of the colony, he headed away first in his aircraft, which crash-landed

at an inland location, and he then reached a port to join a ship. This began a journey across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean to the United States. Travelling overland to the East Coast, and thence by steamer across the Atlantic, his luck ran out when he was captured by the British at Gibraltar on 8th February 1915. Via short stays in a prison ship in the Solent and then a detention camp at Dorchester, he ended up at a prisoner of war camp at Donnington Hall in Leicestershire.

Unwilling to remain incarcerated, he was impatient to escape and get back to flying. So he broke out with another prisoner on the evening of 4th July. They headed separately for London, which he knew from a pre-war visit, intending to meet there and board a neutral ship in the port to seek their freedom, but his fellow escapee was soon captured. Plüschow stayed in London a day and a night but then changed his strategy. He was now intent on hastening down to Tilbury and Gravesend, where Dutch steamers left for Holland every day. This was a tempting way out for a return to Germany, but news of his escape from Donnington

Hall and his description had by now appeared in the press.

In a summarised way, this article narrates what happened as told by Plüschow himself, partly in his report to his superiors in the German navy and, more expansively, in his post-war memoir (My Escape from Donnington Hall (1922). The latter vividly described how he suffered a sequence of obstacles, dangers, failures, risks of recapture at Gravesend and threats to life that might easily have defeated someone with a lesser determination. Five extraordinary escape attempts ensued, the last of which was brilliantly successful.

Above

Fig 1: Gunther Plüschow in full uniform and wearing his Iron Cross

Below

Fig 2: Gravesend’s promenade showing dinghies of a type Plüschow sought for boarding a Dutch ferry

THE FIRST ATTEMPT

He reached Tilbury from London where, pretending to be an American seaman, he enjoyed a meal in an ‘eating house frequented by dock labourers’. His spirits rose when he saw the moored Dutch steamer, Mecklenburg, in the river. He then crossed the Thames to Gravesend and hid under some timber and rubbish at an unknown location but possibly at or near the Canal Basin to bide his time. He then emerged at night, intending to swim out to the steamer. Unfortunately, it was low tide. In desperation, he tried to reach a dinghy floating in the nearest water but got stuck in the ooze. Only with the greatest difficulty did he manage to return to the shore, retreating to his hiding place. In the morning, he sat on a bench in what he described as ‘Gravesend Park’. This was in a riverside location, perhaps the Gordon Pleasure Gardens in the rear of the promenade or the latter itself. Dismayed, he saw his ship sail out of the river. He then journeyed back to London.

THE SECOND ATTEMPT

Returning to Gravesend, the Dutch steamer, Princess Juliana, beckoned. Plüschow again ventured into the water towards a moored dinghy but was swept away by a strong current. He recorded that he soon lost consciousness and awoke well downstream ‘where the river makes a sharp bend’, which must have been somewhere at Higham Bight. He was lucky not to have drowned. After walking back to Gravesend – which would have taken him close to military- controlled areas – he travelled again to London, roaming the streets and visiting what seems to have been an astonishing number of attractions, including picture galleries, music halls, churches and the British Museum, delightedly turning down an invitation from a recruiter to join the British Army along the way. Back in Gravesend in the evening, his thoughts were firmly on the Dutch steamer, tantalisingly moored in the river.

THE THIRD ATTEMPT

Plüschow again rested ‘in the little park which overlooked the Thames, and listened quietly for hours’ to a military band, probably playing in the bandstand on the promenade. He then spotted another dinghy moored to a wharf guarded by a sentry. Although we cannot be sure, this was perhaps not far from the canal basin lock. Under cover of darkness and, at about midnight, and ‘with the stealth of an Indian, he jumped over an embankment and into the dinghy and rowed off. Unfortunately, the boat leaked and filled with water, stranding him on the mud with the receding tide.

With great difficulty, he got back across the mud, onto the land and back into a park area where he cleaned himself up. Pretending to be a drunk and bluffing his way past a sentry on a little bridge, perhaps over the lock gates at the entrance to the Canal Basin, he moved on.

Top

Fig 3: Plüschow posing in the clothes he wore during his escape from London Bottom

Fig 4: Ferry and ferry station at Gravesend used by Plüschow, shown before the Great War

THE FOURTH ATTEMPT

About 2pm, he tried again, jumping into the water, and was ‘seized by the current’, yet sequentially climbed into no fewer than five moored dinghies, hoping to find one he could use for his escape, but they were all empty of oars or any means of propelling them. Once again, he retreated to the shore and back into a hiding place. As was now routine, he then went up to London; on this occasion, he asserted ‘on foot’ to seek entertainment in a music hall.

THE FIFTH AND SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT

Plüschow returned from London on the last train to Tilbury and crossed by ferry back to Gravesend, still determined to escape. Passing some fishermen’s dwellings, he slipped down to the water’s edge, from his description probably at Bawley Bay and, seeing a young fisherman distracted in kissing his sweetheart on a bench, stole his dinghy. Striking out past a cluster of fishing boats where a woman nursed her baby, he shot under a military pontoon bridge, ignoring the challenge of sentries, only to be stopped by a collision with the anchor chain of a coal tender, and almost capsized. A little later, he slid downstream again and ‘pulled up’ on the shore at a ‘crumbling old bridge’ (probably a jetty) to hide in nearby long grass, presumably at the edge of the marshes.

Undaunted by seeing his intended vessel, the Mecklenburg, steam out of the Thames at 8am, some 12 hours later, he regained his dinghy, and the incoming tide took him upstream where he attached it by line to the same coal tender where he had been stranded the night before. The Princess Juliana had now come back again. Waiting

Above, left

Fig 5: Gravesend promenade, which became familiar to Plüschow, with bandstand in view

Above, right

Fig 6: Peter Torode standing on the modern lock gate bridge of the

Canal Basin in Gravesend. Plüschow likely walked on its predecessor

Below, left

Fig 7: Historical view of Bawley Bay area from which Plüschow stole a dinghy Below, right

Fig 8: The pontoon bridge with military guards in 1915

until the ebb tide, at midnight, he floated to the buoy of this steamer on which he sat. Kicking away the boat in the first few minutes of the 11th July, he climbed aboard with as he described, ‘iron composure – at this time like a cat’ up the cable and on to the deck where he found a place to stow away, avoiding being seen by two sentries. Awoken by the ship’s siren when she docked at Flushing, he slipped down the gangway with the other passengers and, he recorded, passed through a door marked to forbid entry and into neutral Holland, for the final stage of his journey to freedom. He was back in Germany in a short time where he received the Iron Cross, promotion to Lieutenant- Commander and command of a naval air station in the Baltic.

Plüschow’s other adventures are for another place, but after the war and a succession of unfulfilling jobs, a sense of adventure drew him to South America about which he had dreamed since childhood. There, from 1928, he began an amazing sequence of risk-taking flights to explore, film and map remote lands in Chile and Argentina, surmounting all manner of obstacles and hardships. But he was killed in an air accident in Patagonia in 1931, just nine days before his 45th birthday.

Plüschow has been seen as something of a self-publicist, and it is not beyond possibility that his memoir embellished at least some details of his escape. Moreover, it contains gaps, is a far from clear narrative of dates and timings, with the meaning of a few descriptions and some exact locations uncertain. As a result, his account may, in places, be subject to differing interpretations. There may also have been other dimensions to his escape of which we are not aware. Plüschow’s account was questioned post-war in a critique by Sir Basil Thomson, who transposed the escape scene from Gravesend to Greenwich.

Whatever the whole story, Plüschow’s escape was real and remarkable. Indeed, if his account is followed, his route in the lower

Thames area can still be walked and sailed if you had a boat. Being able still to see the setting of the escape, can with a bit of imagination, bring alive this unique occurrence.

Plüschow’s fame was celebrated in Germany in his lifetime, but, in time, a national memory there gradually faded. Unsullied by any association with the Nazi movement, he was rediscovered there in 2000 with the formation of the Circle of Friends of Gunther Plüschow, which researches his life and achievements. In England, he had already been discovered in 1980 by Lynda Smith, who wrote about him in Bygone Kent in 1997 and again by Anton Rippon (Gunther Plüschow – airman, escaper, explorer (2009)).

The writer wrote an account of his escape in Historic Gravesham, No. 62 (2016), which this article slightly revises. To paraphrase the words of the Circle of Friends, Plüschow was no ice-cold warrior nor an enthusiast for war, but a larger than life boys own hero. He sought adventure wherever he could find it. Clever, determined, with a smile on his face, he made his way through his heroic tale with a twinkle in his eye. In these terms, he is of enduring international appeal.

Above, left

Fig 9: Peter Torode pointing to where the pontoon bridge would have been, under which Plüschow escaped in a stolen dinghy

Above, right

Fig 10: Map of the area showing Plüschow’s final escape route, the position of the Princess Juliana being suggested by a local maritime historian

The commemoration in 2015, attended by Commander Jan Hackstein, Naval Attaché at the German Embassy, as well as by the German Circle of Friends, took place on both sides of the Thames at Gravesend and Tilbury, with the unveiling of plaques at both places, and the addition of a photographic panel at Gravesend. There was even a costumed re-enactment of Plüschow crossing the Thames in a ferry. The event at Gravesend in 2021 had a broader international attendance, with not only Captain

Matthias Schmidt, the Naval Attaché

from the German Embassy, but service representatives of the Netherlands and of Chile and Argentina too, the latter two countries being those which Plüschow had explored by air in the 1920s. Both occasions were made possible through the organisational elan of Peter Torode (currently Chief Executive of Consilium Dare and the Gravesham Heritage Forum).

PHOTO CREDITS:

Images and photographs are courtesy of Peter Torode, Victor Smith and Gravesend Historical Society.

Above

Fig 11: Commemorative event in Gravesend held in July 2021