This is the second of a three-part story by University of Leeds lecturer Anne Buckley on the life of Herbert Straehler, a naval officer who was interned in Raikeswood Camp in 1918-19.

 

Herbert Straehler had been a prisoner of war in Fukuoka since November 1914 when the Japanese, assisted by the British, defeated the Germans at Tsingtao (now Qingdao) in China and took possession of Germany’s colony.

In November 1915, Straehler was one of five German officers to escape separately from the Fukuoka POW camp. He was assisted by the camp interpreter, Dr Hack, who provided the visiting card of a French teacher to use as ID – Straehler could speak French. Straehler broke out of the camp and travelled by train through Japan and then by ferry to Korea, before continuing his journey by train. Korea at this time was occupied by Japan so he wasn’t safe until he passed into neutral China.

Straehler initially travelled to Peking (Beijing) to meet up with the German Ambassador, Admiral von Hintze, to work out the best way to get back to Germany. It was here that he found out that the Japanese had placed wanted posters of him on the trains of the Trans-Siberian railway. Von Hintze advised Straehler to go to Shanghai and to keep his head down for a few weeks. He stayed with a family who had previously lived in Tsingtao and this is where he spent Christmas 1915.

Meanwhile Fritz Sachsse had also escaped from Fukuoka and made his way to Shanghai by the same route as Straehler. He had a nerve-wracking journey during which he was followed by some Japanese secret police and questioned several times. At one point this involved a chase in a horse-drawn taxi cab when he was changing stations.

While in Shanghai Sachsse and Straehler researched and took advice, including from the German Ambassador von Hintze, and developed a plan to get back to Germany. They eventually decided to head west through China on the route of the old silk road. Their aim was to reach Afghanistan, as they had received news that a German military mission had just arrived there.

They obtained the passports of two teachers who had worked in Tsingtao but were now back in Germany. They bought some Chinese clothing (to avoid standing out), cooking equipment, good sleeping bags, books on China and Central Asia, and weapons. They set off by rail and had to pay an excess baggage charge as they had 15 pieces of luggage. After five days and 1270km, they reached the end of the railway line. They continued for another 3250km by horse and cart and then on horseback. This took another 80 days, including nine rest days.

Sachsse’s diary provides an interesting insight into the relationship between the two men, of whom Sachsse was the more senior officer. In his diary entry for March 20, 1916 Sachsse wrote: ‘It was a wonderful feeling to sleep in a proper bed again. I was the only one who had this privilege: Straehler and Nikodemus [the Chinese servant] had prepared themselves a bed on the floor.’ Straehler was also given the task of haggling with the cart owners, and buying and selling the horses.

The diaries contain detailed descriptions of the landscape, for example on March 23, 1916 Sachsse wrote: ‘We rode through rocky steppe, which, however, did not seem as desolate as the desert due to the trees, farmsteads, oases and villages that appeared now and then. We always had a magnificent view of the sunlit snow-covered mountain ranges in the north.’ Sachsse’s diary also reveals how the pair were welcomed by the local officials. On March 2, 1916 he wrote: ‘We were received most cordially by the Amban [chief civil officer], were seated in the place of honour, had pastries and a wine-like drink placed before us and were questioned thoroughly.’ On April 3, while in the city of Turpan in the Uyghur region, they were given a 15-course breakfast including ‘delicacies such as shark fin’.

Unfortunately, shortly after this, and having taken three months to get to this point, Sachsse and Straehler were forced to return to Shanghai, having been told that British and Russians were looking out for them and the Chinese could not guarantee their safely as they did not have diplomatic passports. They then tried an alternative route to Germany via America but were recaptured off the Orkney Isles in November 1916 when the British navy searched the Norwegian ship on which they had stowed away. They had been on the run for a year.

Straehler’s granddaughter, Uta Heidtke, and Anne Buckley are now working together on a book to tell the story of the escape, with chapters on Sachsse and Straehler’s captivity in Japan and their lives in Germany’s colony in China before the Great War.

Read the final part of the trilogy in next week's Craven Herald.