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Maj Mike Edwards

Joining the Royal Welsh Regiment in I938 he was captured near St Venant in 1939. After escaping from Eichstedt and because of many other escapes, he spent lime in several prison camps before being moved to Colditz in 1943 where he was involved in numerous escape attempts. Taken prisoner during his battalion's defence of a sector of the Dunkirk perimeter in May 1940, Michael Edwards became a thorn in his captors' flesh by persistent attempts to escape. After involvement in three attempts, he was sent to Oflag IV C - Colditz Castle in Saxony, where his expertise in lock-picking and key-making facilitated escape plans and preparation. Initially confined at Oflag VII C/H, Laufen Castle in Bavaria, he picked the lock of the German Commandant's wine cellar. He and his friends took full advantage of this until their ruse of refilling the bottles with coloured water was discovered. Unfortunately, this led to a canteen being closed from where prisoners were allowed to buy light German beer. Moved to the nearby camp at Tittmoning, Edwards and Lieutenant James McDonnell, of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, tried to escape at night wearing homemade German uniforms. The fire they lit in the camp caused the required confusion, but the main gate sentry noticed the odd shape of their helmets and called out the guard. This resulted in transfer to the Oflag VIB at Warburg, on a desolate plateau west of the Weser. There, his expertise in lock-picking came in useful for the Warburg Wire Job escape. A number of rapid assembly ladders made from duckboards and roof beams were used for scaling the double perimeter fence, but first the perimeter lighting had to be fused. Edwards picked the lock of the generator shed to enable the switch controlling the current to be short-circuited by a metal bar pulled across it by a string through the window. Forty-one prisoners got over the wire in three minutes on the night of August 30, 1942. Edwards was not among them, however, as he was due to leave by a tunnel on the same night. Sadly, this had to be revealed when an officer was electrocuted and trapped by falling earth. His next attempt, initially successful, was made from Oflag VII B at Eichstätt, also in Bavaria. He was one of 65 who escaped through a tunnel that had long been in preparation. About 50,000 German troops, police, Volksturm and Hitler Youth were turned out to search the local countryside. Everyone who escaped was recaptured, Edwards after three days at liberty. A whimsical and witty man, Edwards had not taken his expertise with locks and keys with him into captivity. His inquiring mind about mechanics led him to dismantle locks he found in various camps to see how they worked and how to open them. By the time he reached Colditz in July 1943, following recapture after the Eichstätt escape, he was regularly making keys from just a glance at the type or from impressions in soap or clay for the more complex designs. In parallel with participation in escape attempts, he entered into the distillery business. At Warburg, he produced a 'hooch' for the Royal Welch Fusiliers' St David's Day dinner on March 1, 1942. Alas, his room was raided on February 28 and all but two bottles held in another room were confiscated. Further heartbreak followed when the room of his friend Captain Walter Clough-Taylor was raided early on March 1 and the two surviving bottles were discovered. In Colditz, he made no attempt to escape but worked on the distillery and aided escape plans by picking locks and making keys. His greatest technical achievement was the manufacture of the cruciform key to the Zeiss Icon lock in the door of the attic in which the glider, designed by Flying Officer Bill Goldfinch of the RAF, was secretly built by a team of prisoners during the final year of the war. The aim was to ensure that at least two prisoners would survive to tell the tale of an anticipated SS massacre of prisoners.Francis Michael Edwards was born in Chester, the second son of Captain A. H. Edwards and grandson of the Most Rev A. G. Edwards, the first Archbishop of Wales. Educated at Radley and RMC Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1938 and went to France with the 1st Battalion in the British Expeditionary Force in 1939. Towards the end of the German blitzkrieg through the Low Countries into northern France in May 1940, he was acting commander of 'B' Company 1st Royal Welch. Overwhelmed by the force of German armour and co- ordinated dive-bombing by the Luftwaffe, the BEF was driven back to the port of Dunkirk. Despite being recommended for the MC for his personal conduct and leadership while commanding a company as a 2nd Lieutenant at Robecq, on the outer perimeter of the Dunkirk defences, he received the lesser recognition of a mention in dispatches, possibly because the citation was written long after the event by an officer who was also taken prisoner. One of his platoon commanders was Desmond Llewellyn, who was later to make his name as Q in the James Bond films. He was again mentioned in dispatches for his escape attempts while a prisoner of war and his contribution to other escape plans. He returned to regimental duty after liberation from Colditz by the US Army in April 1945 but retired in 1958 to enter industry. He later ran a smallholding in Dorset. He married Islay Sismey, only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Sismey, of the 60th Rifles, in 1953. She survived him by only 15 days. He leaves a son and daughter. Major Michael Edwards, veteran of Colditz, was born on October 13, 1917. He died on September 23, 2006, aged 88.