End of the Hunt

Though many had tried, none had ever escaped for long from Stalag-Luft III, deep in the heart of Germany. But past failures did not discourage Captain Richard Michael Clinton Codner of the Royal Artillery, a young (23) and bronzed Oxford undergraduate with a mop of black hair and a sensitive, mischievous face. Around the camp he was known as "a classical fellow, always reading Latin and he could spout it by the yard."

It was Codner, with his knowledge of the classics, who thought of the wooden horse and convinced two others--Navigator Eric Williams and Squadron Leader Oliver Philpot--that it would work. For four torturous months, the three took turns in a sandy, almost airless pit in the center of the camp exercise ground, clawing, inch by inch, a tunnel toward freedom. Above them stood a homemade, hollow vaulting horse. Fellow prisoners dutifully toted it to the open ground every day (with one or two of the diggers inside), and vaulted over it in pretended gymnastics while the human moles worked beneath them.

"Really Living." Their escape, since described by Williams in his bestselling The Wooden Horse, was one of World War II's most exciting contributions to man's long, suspenseful lore of escapes. It also had a deep effect on Mike Codner. Soon after their escape Codner (who was "John Clinton" in the book) explained it to Williams.

"Y'know," he said, "I enjoyed myself when we were escaping. There was something about it. We were really living then. People don't live half the time y'know . . . I think it's only when you're being hunted that you really live ... I liked being hunted ... the feeling that every minute was important, that everything you did would sway the balance . . ."

In the quiet aftermath of peace, Codner married, finished his studies in colonial administration at Oxford, and put in for service in Malaya, the place where he was born (son of a British rubber planter). It was an assignment for an adventurer--a job as assistant district officer in charge of 20,000 Malayans and Chinese in Tanjong Malim. The area was a hot spot in the interminable war between Britain and the Malayan Communists. Codner, often the hunter, could also be what he liked to be--one of the hunted. The village he worked in was ringed with barbed wire, but Codner did his best to keep it from resembling a prison camp.

One day last week, guerrillas sabotaged the pipeline which carries Tanjong Mal-im's water supply. Codner led a party into the jungle to repair it. They had not gone far when a band of guerrillas sprang from ambush with blazing Bren and Sten guns. When help came, it was too late--twelve of the repair party were dead. One of them was Richard Michael Clinton Codner, who had been wounded by machine gun fire, tried to crawl to cover, and was shot dead beneath a bush.

"Have Some Guts." When Malaya's new British high commissioner, tough little General Sir Gerald Templer, heard the news, he sped to the barbed-wire village in his armored car, assembled 300 village elders in a school auditorium, and meted out punishment. Tanjong Malim had long been a supply and information depot for the Red guerrillas, he said. "It does not amuse me to punish innocent people," snapped Templer, "but many among you are not innocent. You have information which you are too cowardly to give . . . Have some guts and shoulder the responsibility of citizenship." Templer slapped a 22-hour curfew on the entire village, allowing inhabitants to move about only during the usual midday shopping hours, and cut the rice ration of all but children from 6 2/3 to 4 Ibs. per week.

Back in England, Eric Williams learned the news of his friend's death. "He was quite the bravest, the most gifted and the most unassuming man I've ever met." Said Philpot, the third wooden-horseman: "It's appalling, but it's the way you might have expected him to die."

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