On 2 July 1941, Pierre Mairesse-Lebrun did not try to disappear inside Colditz Castle or walk through a gate in disguise. During exercise in the park below the fortress, the French cavalry officer put one foot into Lieutenant Pierre Odry’s clasped hands and was heaved over the wire enclosure. He then had to cross open ground, climb the outer wall while sentries fired, and get far enough away before the search closed around him.
The simplicity of the method is what makes the escape distinctive. Colditz produced elaborate tunnels, forged uniforms and concealed compartments, but Mairesse-Lebrun’s successful break depended on timing, athletic ability and a few seconds of assistance from another prisoner.
Why Mairesse-Lebrun was at Colditz
Mairesse-Lebrun had been captured during the fall of France in 1940 and sent into the German officer-prisoner system. He quickly established a record as an escaper. In October 1940 he broke out of the camp at Warburg with another officer and reached the area of the Swiss frontier before being recaptured. At Münster he later tried to pass through the main gate with a group of workmen, but that attempt also failed.
On 3 December 1940 he was transferred to Oflag IV-C at Colditz. The castle had become the German military’s special high-security camp for Allied officers considered difficult to hold, including men with previous escape records. Mairesse-Lebrun therefore arrived at a prison where the guards already had reason to watch him closely.
His first Colditz break came on 9 June 1941. During exercise in the park, he hid in the rafters of an open-sided pavilion while other prisoners helped manipulate the count. After the group returned to the castle and a signal indicated that the area was clear, he climbed out of the park and walked to Grossbothen station in civilian clothes improvised from pajamas.
The plan failed well beyond the Colditz perimeter. At the station he tried to buy a ticket with an obsolete 100-mark note. Suspicion followed, and although he climbed out of the station-master’s office while a telephone call was being made, he was quickly recaptured. Back at Colditz, he received twenty-one days in cells.
Selected chronology
Selected chronology
Earlier escape from Warburg
Mairesse-Lebrun escaped from the Warburg officer camp with a companion and reached the Swiss frontier area before being recaptured.
Transferred to Colditz
After another unsuccessful attempt at Münster, he was transferred to Oflag IV-C at Colditz.
First break out of Colditz
He hid in the rafters of a park pavilion and got beyond the castle grounds, but was recaptured after an obsolete banknote drew suspicion at Grossbothen station.
Fence-vault escape
Pierre Odry boosted Mairesse-Lebrun over the exercise-park wire; he crossed the outer wall under fire and escaped into the surrounding countryside.
Reaches Switzerland
Imperial War Museums catalogues Mairesse-Lebrun’s escape from Germany to Switzerland in July 1941.
Problem → response
Escape was a sequence of problems
Each response solved a practical obstacle while often creating the next one.
- 01→
Obstacle
Approximately eight-foot wire fence
The exercise enclosure’s wire barrier had to be cleared in one movement before guards could intervene.
Response
Pierre Odry clasped his hands to form a step and gave Mairesse-Lebrun the lift needed to clear it.
- 02→
Obstacle
Exposed ground watched by armed sentries
Roughly fifty yards separated the wire from the outer wall, leaving Mairesse-Lebrun visible once he landed.
Response
He sprinted for the wall while the sentries fired and used the brief pause while they reloaded to continue over the perimeter.
- 03→
Obstacle
Search and long-distance evasion
Clearing the wall only began a journey through Germany toward neutral territory without normal travel papers.
Response
He hid until dark, moved mainly at night, followed the Mulde south-west, and later used a bicycle before reaching Switzerland.
The direct break over the wire
Prisoners serving cell sentences were still taken to the park for daily exercise. Patrick Reid’s postwar account places Mairesse-Lebrun there with Pierre Odry, another French lieutenant who had also been punished after an escape attempt. An officer, a Feldwebel and three armed guards watched the small exercise group inside a barbed-wire enclosure.
Mairesse-Lebrun decided to use that exposure rather than defeat it with concealment. He trained during the exercise periods and studied the barrier until he believed he could clear it with Odry’s help. His escape clothing was equally spare: shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, a sleeveless leather jacket, socks and rubber-soled shoes, with a few small necessities hidden beneath the jacket. Several opportunities were abandoned before he judged the circumstances right.
On 2 July, the two men walked the enclosure long enough to make their movements appear ordinary. Reid says they selected the exact point of the attempt and marked it with a pebble. When they came around again, Mairesse-Lebrun stepped into Odry’s clasped hands. Odry lifted hard enough to send him over the wire, which Reid describes as about eight feet high.
Later retellings sometimes say Mairesse-Lebrun was “catapulted” over the fence. The word can make the method sound more mechanical than it was. The detailed account describes no device: Odry formed a step with his hands and supplied the upward force while Mairesse-Lebrun jumped.
Landing beyond the wire did not put him outside Colditz. Reid places the outer wall roughly fifty yards away. Mairesse-Lebrun sprinted toward it as the guards opened fire, reached the masonry during a pause in the shooting, pulled himself onto the top and dropped down the far side. PBS’s NOVA history of Colditz independently preserves the essential sequence: one French officer helped another over the park barrier on 2 July, after which the escaper got away amid shots from the guards.
The final accounting
Outcome
Successful Colditz escape
Mairesse-Lebrun escaped the Colditz perimeter on 2 July 1941 and was not recaptured in Germany.
Return to Allied military service
The open-source record is incomplete on every stage after Switzerland, but Reid places Mairesse-Lebrun on General de Lattre de Tassigny’s First Army staff in Germany by early 1945.
From the wall to Switzerland
The escape remained dangerous after the wall disappeared behind him. Mairesse-Lebrun ran into nearby woods, crossed a river more than once in an attempt to complicate pursuit, and hid in a field while an alarm sounded. He waited for darkness before beginning the longer journey away from Colditz.
For the next stage, Reid describes him travelling mainly at night and following the River Mulde south-west. Rain made movement particularly uncomfortable because he was still dressed for exercise. By 5 July he had reached Zwickau, where he acquired a bicycle. That helped turn the conspicuous runner in shorts into something closer to an ordinary cyclist moving through Germany.
Reid ultimately puts the journey to Switzerland at nearly 400 miles. The Imperial War Museums provides an important independent anchor for the outcome: its catalogue entry for Mairesse-Lebrun’s own oral-history interview identifies him as a French officer held at Colditz in 1940–41 who escaped from Germany to Switzerland in July 1941.
That distinction matters. Getting beyond the Colditz wall was a successful prison escape, but the “home run” required avoiding recapture across a much larger stretch of German-controlled territory. Mairesse-Lebrun accomplished both.
Evidence discipline
What the record supports
Status labels distinguish secure conclusions from uncertainty and rejected claims. Color is never the only signal.
WELL-SUPPORTED
Pierre Odry manually boosted Mairesse-Lebrun over the exercise-park wire.
Reid describes Mairesse-Lebrun placing a foot in Odry’s clasped hands before a strong heave carried him over the wire; PBS independently describes one French officer helping another over the park barrier.
Sources: SRC-002, SRC-003DOCUMENTED
Mairesse-Lebrun reached neutral Switzerland after the 2 July escape.
The Imperial War Museums catalogue for Mairesse-Lebrun’s own oral-history interview identifies him as a Colditz POW who escaped from Germany to Switzerland in July 1941.
Sources: SRC-001UNKNOWN
The entire route from Switzerland through Vichy France and Spain to his later Allied service can be reconstructed continuously from the open sources reviewed.
Later French summaries describe his passage through Vichy France and Spain, while Reid securely places him on de Lattre’s staff by early 1945. The open material reviewed here does not provide a continuous, independently documented itinerary for every intervening stage.
Sources: SRC-002, SRC-006What happened afterward
The openly accessible record becomes less continuous after Switzerland. A French resistance-memory project describes his passage from Switzerland into Vichy France and a later attempt, in December 1941, to reach Spain. It states that he was arrested there and badly injured while trying to escape again. Those later stages should not be compressed into one seamless route without stronger documentation.
What can be established farther forward is that Mairesse-Lebrun returned to Allied military service. Reid places him on the staff of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s First Army by early 1945, after that army had crossed the Rhine into Germany. The former Colditz prisoner even proposed an advance to liberate the castle, although the plan was not carried out.
Mairesse-Lebrun’s July 1941 escape therefore stands apart from the better-known disguised walkouts and tunnel schemes associated with Colditz. It was a direct breach of two physical barriers in full view of guards, followed by a long evasion to neutral territory. Keeping the story at that scale also preserves what makes it useful beside other Colditz cases: not another general history of the castle, but one unusually clear example of an assisted fence vault becoming a successful long-distance escape.