Close-up of King Hans Gades Jail window with dummy bar
October 1942. Danish police and prison authorities scratched their heads as they tried to make sense of the new wave of attacks on German property in Aalborg—especially cars. One German roadster was found in the fjord tipped over on its side like a beached whale. Investigators determined that somebody must have started the engine without using a key, driven it at high speed down to the harbor, and leaped out just before the auto shot out over the wharf like a missile. The German military was stirred up once again. “Get this solved at once,” they harrumphed, “or else we will.” It seemed as if everything was back at square one.
But who could have done such things? All the young Churchill Club boys from Cathedral School had been transferred to Nyborg State Prison. The three older prisoners—Alf and Kaj Houlberg and Knud Hornbo—were still locked in King Hans Gades Jail in Aalborg. In fact, now they were together in a single cell. Guards squinting through the peephole observed the three young men reading, chatting, piecing together model airplanes, and playing chess. They seemed to yawn and nap a lot, but jail life was hardly exciting.
The three cellmates settled down for the night like everyone else in the building when lights were out. Or at least that’s how it looked. But as it happened, the cell they inhabited was the one with the dummy bar. When darkness and silence settled over the jail, the three became alert as cats. They got up, fished their shirts and trousers from behind the bed, and scrambled into their clothes. Each night Alf left a piece of paper on a stool in the center of the cell. On it, he scribbled his parents’ telephone number and a brief message to their Danish jailers. “Please don’t call the police,” it read. “Call this number and we will return immediately.”
Prison yard photograph of the Brønderslev Three: Kaj (8), Alf (9), Knud H. (0)
Alf usually went out first. He climbed onto a chair, removed the dummy bar, squeezed through the opening, and crawled onto an awning in front of the window. Next came Knud Hornbo, who was a little pudgy. Halfway through the opening on the first attempt he got stuck. He tried not to cry out in fear or pain. Alf pulled from the outside and Kaj pushed from inside until they finally got him out, spraining his arm in the process. Kaj slid out with ease.
The rest was simple. They crawled over the wire mesh above the outdoor yard and dropped into the prison orchard. Then, after concealing themselves in dense shrubbery until they knew everything was clear, they stepped into the street as free men.
Knud Hornbo and the Houlberg brothers escaped nineteen nights in a row. The trio got so used to leaving the prison that one day they left too early and found themselves uncomfortably out on the street in broad daylight. They ducked into a movie theater and took seats. Once their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they found that they were seated among German soldiers enjoying a weekly newsreel of German battlefield heroics.
The escaped prisoners’ nightly routine seldom varied. First they continued the work of the Churchill Club, smashing the instrument panels of unguarded German roadsters and setting them ablaze. When they were finished, the three walked to the Houlberg home and ate dinner with Alf and Kaj’s family. The first-night shock of seeing the boys at the front door soon gave way to elation—and scheming. The boys now set to work trying to find a boat that would take them out of the Limfjorden and sail them to Sweden.
On the nineteenth night of their freedom, the young men bade the Houlbergs goodbye and started back toward the jail. As they walked they agreed it had been a lovely night: they had found and decommissioned a stylish German roadster, shorting out its electrical system. Dinner had been a festive occasion, with good food and voices raised in song. Old friends had passed in and out of their open door. They had all waved Norwegian and Danish flags. Best of all, Mr. Houlberg announced that a boat had been identified whose captain appeared to be interested in taking them to Sweden. Be ready, Mr. Houlberg had said. It could happen any day now.
And then, as they walked through the chilly morning air, a siren shattered Aalborg’s predawn silence. They froze in midstep. The streets were nearly empty at 4:00 a.m., so the three young men stood out conspicuously. As the siren screamed on, their minds flooded. What should they do: Run for home? Run for jail? It was too far to reach either. They were supposed to go to a shelter during an air alert, but shelter authorities always asked for identification cards. Theirs had been confiscated at the jail. The trio ducked into the entranceway of a nearby building to gather their thoughts and make a plan. Two police officers detected their movement. One shone his flashlight into the dark recess and found six rabbit-red eyes. “May I see your identity cards?” he asked.
Soon everyone was at the police station, where stunned officers recognized but could no longer protect the three escape artists. German soldiers took them into custody and rounded up the rest of the Houlberg family. Interrogators quickly cleared up the mystery of the destroyed German property. Alf and Kaj Houlberg and Knud Hornbo were swiftly tried and convicted in German military court and transported to a German prison. Each received a sentence of more than ten years.
Danish officials loudly protested. Crimes allegedly committed by Danes on Danish soil were to be prosecuted by Danes—that was the agreement they had made. Denmark insisted that the three be returned. But German authorities weren’t budging. They accused the Danish police chief of being in on the dummy window bar. Prisoners couldn’t have done something like that alone, they charged. It would have made too much noise. They had to have had help.
Either way, the Churchill Club was now completely sidelined. For ten months, from marking walls with blue paint and twisting signs to stealing weapons and destroying important German assets, Denmark’s first occupation resisters had bedeviled their “protectors” and awakened the courage of many Danes. But with the Brønderslev three in German captivity and the younger seven locked up at Nyborg, for now at least, it seemed the Churchill Club was history.