Jack Best spent a year in hiding at Colditz. He was a 'ghost' who covered for prisoners at roll calls to allow them to escape.

Guardian

The drive to escape from Colditz amongst British prisoners of war - all of them officers - was so feverish that there could be as many as 84 stunts in preparation at any one time. Best and his tunnel-digging mate - a naval officer called Mike Harvey, who died some years ago - became "ghosts" while tunnelling their way under the chapel and across the exercise yard towards the boiler room at the perimeter.

The escape committee decided that it was taking too long for the pair to get to the worksite and back again four times a day in time for full parade. They were getting too little work done. The answer, it seemed, was for them to disappear.

"It was decided that if there were a couple of supernumeraries in the camp, work on the tunnel could go on virtually all the time," says Best. So, during a furore over a subsequent escape attempt, the prisoners claimed two men had got away. "The Germans swallowed it," says Best.

The tunnel was discovered soon after, but by then the prisoners had realised how useful ghosts would be in buying time for other escapees. "If their absence could be covered up for a few days, the search would not be on," says Best.

So for a year Best and Harvey haunted the castle, initially living in cupboards and under floorboards. "For the first week we came up from under the chapel for an hour each evening. Our friends, sharing rations since we no longer had any, organised a good meal for us and a basin of hot water to clean ourselves up." Later, we came up every evening and slept in somebody's bed while they went down for a while. But for three months or more we never went outside at all. We would stay in a room, and when there was a roll call we hid in cupboards."

They had a bunch of keys to enable them to pass from one room to another. After three months, the guard had been changed, so Best and Harvey began to appear in public. "There was a big influx of British officers so we'd put on somebody's uniform, join one of the new people, and go for a walk with them, not with our friends," says Best. The ghosts used doubles with similar build and colouring for these expeditions.

Best and Harvey also began reappearing for short periods to make up the numbers when men were stuck briefly in a tunnel and could not get back for roll call - there were twice as many of these at Colditz as in other prison camps.

Lieutenant (now Brigadier) Grismond Davies-Scourfield was one of those replaced by a ghost when he carried out one of the most daring escapes. In the current Channel 4 series, Escape from Colditz, Davies-Scourfield tells how he was carried in a rubbish handcart into a cellar in the German quarters, stripped off to reveal a German corporal's uniform, then strolled out of the castle with a group of guards who did not speak to him. It was imperative that he had a few days' grace before the escape was discovered, and here the ghost materialised.

Davies-Scourfield, now retired from the army and living in Hampshire, has great respect for the ghosts." It was a great sacrifice they made," he says. In recognition of this, there were efforts to get the ghosts out. Anybody who originated an escape plan was first in line to get out, but next priority went to a ghost.

Best once tried an escape as a ghost. "This meant my double in the camp had to disappear too, and become a ghost," he says. But Best did not make it out of the castle and hurriedly had to become a ghost again, while his double had to rematerialise.

As time went on, Best would venture out more often, which led to further complications. "I was caught twice in a strip search," he says. But his forged identity papers were good enough for the guards, who were looking for contraband, not phantoms. "After the search I had to race back to my double, so he could take over, and I disappeared again.

"Eventually Mike Harvey made an attempt at escape which, unfortunately, did not work and he was sent to the cells, where he said he was his double. But a German sergeant said: 'That's not so and so, He was here two months ago and I remember him.' Then the Germans came and arrested Mike's double while he was talking to me."

It was clear the game was up. "It was obvious they would find me," Jack says. "It took them a week. I wasn't really hiding any more - my main use was over, the idea was blown." But when the Germans eventually caught Best, they still had a problem. Since he had "escaped" almost a full year before, his fingerprints had been sent to Berlin.

"While they could prove who I wasn't, they could not prove who I was. Eventually, there was no point in holding out and going to the cells for no reason, so I told them who I was. Then I asked could I have my rations back. They said no. I asked if I could go on parade. They said yes."

Soon, escape attempts were wound down. The war was nearly won and orders came from England not to escape. "The Germans also warned: 'If you go into certain parts of Germany you won't come out.'"

After the war, Jack returned to his Kenyan farm. Then, in 1961, the Ghost of Colditz returned to Herefordshire, first to farm and then, with his wife, for a peaceful retirement.