CAPTAIN KENNETH LOCKWOODMBE, who died on 8 October 2007, was a stockbroker from London who became a nuisance for German guards during the Second World War by helping organise numerous escape attempts from POW camps.He was one of the "Laufen Six" who made what is thought to be the earliest escape from a German prison during the war.Recaptured shortly afterwards, he was then one of the first British captives sent to Colditz. There he was a key member of the "escape committee" and assisted in several daring and inventive escape plans.Kenneth Lockwood was born in London on 17 December, 1911, and educated at Whitgift School, Croydon, where he learned German and French. He began his working life as a clerk in his father’s firm.He joined the Territorial Army in 1933 and his unit, the 2nd London Regiment (Queen's Royal West Surreys), was mobilised in 1939. After training in Yeovil, they were sent to the Belgian border where Capt Kenneth Lockwood showed signs of his rebelliousness by arguing with officers over the wisdom of digging trenches which, he pointed out, had not worked in the last war.He was captured by German forces in May the following year during a rearguard action near Dunkirk and sent to the makeshift prison at Laufen Castle in Bavaria. There he first met Pat Reid, who assumed the role of escape committee chairman. "Under King's Regulations," Capt Lockwood said in 2002, "it was our duty to try to get out - and in so doing to cause as much trouble as possible. Hopefully, we did that."Within a month they escaped Laufen through a tunnel. Clumsily disguised as women, six men fled across the countryside in two groups. Lockwood’s party stole bicycles, but made the costly mistake of boarding the wrong train. After ending up in Innsbruck, Austria, they were re-arrested.They arrived at Colditz in November, 1940. Colditz Castle, perched on top of a cliff above a small town in Saxony, was seen by the Germans as the ultimate, escape-proof prison.But the Germans’ problem was that, in bringing all their most troublesome POWs to the same prison, they had effectively created an escape academy. Among the inmates were locksmiths, linguists, forgers, tailors, engineers and spies. Capt Lockwood, speaking of their arrival at the castle, said: "Uppermost of all we wondered how we were going to get out of the place".Capt Lockwood was nicknamed "The Ear" for his remarkable ability to acquire information. He was also responsible for bribing guards and obtaining documentation needed once outside.With Pat Reid (whose own flight from Laufen had been shorter-lived than Lockwood’s) again in charge, the prisoners combined their talents in various escape plots. Working in the canteen as a book-keeper, Capt Lockwood discovered the possibility to escape through drains. However, despite being better prepared this time, the party was met at the other end by a bribed guard who had betrayed them. "All we could do was laugh," recalled Capt Lockwood, "which really annoyed the Germans, so we laughed even more."After a spell in solidarity confinement, Capt Lockwood rejoined the escape effort and aided numerous plans, including Reid’s successful escape with three other men through an unguarded cellar in October, 1942 – it was one of 15 "home runs" from Colditz.Capt Lockwood never managed to escape himself and after Colditz was liberated in 1945 he returned to his stockbroker’s job in London. Shortly afterwards he was made honorary secretary of the Colditz Association of former inmates and took to the role with the same enthusiasm as he had approached escaping.He was interviewed many times about his time at Colditz, advised television and film productions about the prison and revisited the castle for the first time in 2000. "We never really got the chance to look at the place from the outside," he joked.
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