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By Root 1117 0

jutting out over the Mulde River, which flowed north to the Elbe, Colditz was perhaps the least attractive, least romantic castle in Germany. The citadel consisted of a series of wings erected over the centuries that had resulted in a figure eight, with two baileys in the middle of the wings. The south bailey was the prisoners' yard. The north was the guards' recreation area. The castle resembled a dormitory, with four- and five-story edifices surrounding the courtyards. The windows were evenly spaced and barred, some looking into the yards, others looking over the apple and pear trees of Upper Saxony. Two Moorish cupola towers were the structure's only ornament. The lower walls were seven feet thick. The wooden roofs were sharply canted. Dormers extended from the roofs in a haphazard fashion, and brick chimneys dotted the roofs. The entrance to the POW yard was over a moat and through mammoth oak doors. The ground fell away from the castle in terraces, on the west toward the town and in other directions toward orchards. The castle loomed over the medieval town of Colditz, where it was visible from every intersection.

With its guests' propensities for escape in mind, the castle had been modified. A machine-gun tower had been built in the northwest corner of the terrace outside the walls, giving a sight line down the north and west walls. Catwalks had been erected to eliminate guards' blind spots in the courtyard and on approaches to the gate. The castle's eighty-foot- high exterior walls were floodlit, as was the POWs' bailey. Microphones and primitive seismographs had been planted in the walls to detect digging. The lights went off only during air raids. Guards were on duty all night in the courtyard.

But since D-Day, escape had lost much of its allure, and attempts had largely stopped at Colditz and other POW camps. General Eisenhower had recently ordered POWs to stay behind the wire. "We'll get to you soon," Colditz's senior POW officer had heard Ike say over the camp's hidden radio. The prisoners knew Ike would keep his word, and so did the guards. The POWs could now hear Allied guns night and day to the south.

Only the American had tried to escape Colditz since Eisenhower's order. More interested in the American than in the approaching Mitchell, Lieutenant Heydekampf glanced at him again. Until last autumn, food had been adequate for the prisoners. Now the POWs were slowly wasting away. The lost weight had sharpened the angles of the American's face. With the wide cheekbones, cleft chin, and the three-day stubble he always wore, his face resembled a gnawed bone. His eyes were the gray-blue of smoke. He had thin, bloodless lips. His blond hair was sparse, and he kept it shorter than the POW fashion, little more than bristles along the sides of his head. He was taller than the other prisoners, and until recently his shoulders had sloped with muscles and his arms had filled his shirts. But he was thinning quickly, with the rest of them, and now the cords on his neck stood out and his clothes fit sloppily. The American had an aura of restrained violence about him, a brawler's presence. The guards knew he was incessantly calculating, searching for weakness and an avenue to exploit. The commandant had ordered that one of the guards on the catwalk above the potato cellar stairs was always to watch the American when he was in the yard. Hey- dekampf and the other guards often speculated about the American. They had concluded he was both dangerous and mad, an alarming combination.

The POWs' breaths showed in the raw air of morning, the steam almost filling the small bailey. Their eyes were on the gray sky. The bomber's remaining engine blustered, echoing between the walls of the courtyard and rattling the windows. The plane sounded as if it was aimed right at the castle. Then the second Wright engine quit, and the abrupt silence in the POW bailey was startling. Heydekampf followed the gaze of the prisoners to the small patch of leaden clouds visible above the castle walls.

The B-25 suddenly filled the sky over the bailey,