“Unbelievable Inventions: The Bizarre Secret Weapons That Almost Changed the Course of WWII!”
One idea of Pyke’s that did pan out was his idea on how to escape from a German prison camp… the one he found himself in at the time. Most of his fellow prisoners thought he was crazy even then, as even if he was able to get out of the camp, it was felt he would either starve, be caught, or killed, before getting out of Germany itself. He proved them all wrong becoming the first to successfully escape from the camp he was in. In his fashion, he meticulously studied all accounts of escape attempts to date by others and why and where they failed. He then devised a plan, at which point he and Edward Falk, a fellow inmate, began a rigorous exercise routine to prepare for their journey.
His plan went as so, with the beginning being every bit as seemingly impractical as many of his other ideas, but nonetheless working: first, use the fact that there was an athletic equipment shed that, while regularly checked by soldiers, was checked at a time of day when, if the sun was out and it was the right time of year, the sun’s rays would glare off a window and cause the soldiers looking into the darkened shed to not be able to see properly. Thus, even though he and Falk could see the guard and weren’t well hidden, the guard could not see them in the small shack. After hiding out, they then managed to slip out of the camp at night with the supply of food they’d been rationing. Following a truly harrowing journey, they made it to what they thought was the border and were caught… turns out, though, they were actually in the Netherlands when caught and were not caught by a German soldier, as they initially thought, but a Dutch one. They had made it.
