Miles Belfrage Reid. Colditz Castle
Lt. Col. M. B. Reid was captured by German paratroopers while serving with the British Army in Greece in 1941. Sent to several German POW camps the World War I veteran proved to be troublesome to his guards, attempting several escapes. Finally in 1942 he was sent to Colditz, where he devised a novel means of escaping his captors, enlisting their aid in the process.
As the oldest prisoner in the Castle, Reid was subject to the usual ribbing common in military establishments towards men more senior in age. In his mid-forties, the affable Reid decided to feign heart disease and apply for repatriation to the United Kingdom on health grounds. To aid him in his deception he bartered for as many cigarettes as he could, and increased his smoking as much as he could stand, causing a near continuous increase in blood pressure coupled with shortness of breath.
At the same time he increased his intake of coffee and tea, again using barter to acquire as much of the substances supplied by the Red Cross as he could. As word of his efforts began to spread, the younger prisoners around him began to support his efforts, and the amount of nicotine and caffeine available for his consumption increased.
In December 1944 the Germans agreed to repatriate Reid to England as a humanitarian gesture, based on his ill health and obvious heart disease. Reid arrived home in early 1945 and was invited to visit the King at Buckingham Palace in February.
Reid’s heart condition may have been chronic as far as the German’s were concerned, but it was another forty years before the wily soldier died in October 1984. Reid published three books based on his war experiences but there is no concrete evidence whether he ever gave up the smoking habit through which he achieved his freedom from German incarceration in 1945.